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Mature  in  a  City  Jj)arb 


flatute  in  a  Cit\>  |)arb 


SOME  RAMBLING 
DISSERTATIONS  THEREUPON 


BY 

CHARLES  M.  SKINNER 

AUTHOR  OF  "  MYTHS  AND  LEGENDS  OP  OUR  OWN  LAND,' 
"VILLON.  THE  VAGABOND  "  (A  PLAY).  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 

Centura  Co, 

1897 


Copyright,  1897,  by 
THE  CENTURY  Co. 


THE  DcViNNE  PRESS. 


THIS   BOOK   I   DEDICATE   TO 

MY  WIFE. 

IF   OUR   YARD   HAS   SOME   TASTE   OF   THAT 

FIRST   GARDEN,   IT   IS   BECAUSE    SHE 

WALKS  THERE.     SHE  TOUCHES 

THE    EARTH    AND    ROSES 

SPRING   FROM   IT. 


Contents 

I  THE  YARD           .        .  .        .:       .      I 

II  SKY          .        .  10 

III  CITY  AND  COUNTRY  LIFE  .        .    25 

IV  WINTER           ...  40 
V  SPRING        ...  .    58 

VI  SUMMER          .       .       .  .80 

VII  AUTUMN      .  .106 

VIII  FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  .        .       126 

IX  THE  SOUL  OF  NATURE  •       •        •  i&> 


NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 


NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 


THE  YARD 

IT  is  a  common  city  yard,  about  eighteen 
feet  by  fifty.  Part  of  it  has  to  be  given 
up  to  clothes  and  lines  on  Monday,  and 
during  the  rest  of  the  week  it  is  a  repository 
for  broken  toys  belonging  to  Clarence  and 
Harold,  the  younger  members  of  the  fam- 
ily, and  an  occasional  and  surreptitious 
tomato-can,  emptied  of  the  material  that 
might  make  it  interesting.  The  cans  we 
firmly  replace  in  the  yards  of  the  neigh- 
bors who  sent  them.  It  is  a  yard,  too,  that 
is  loved  by  tuneful  cats ;  and  even  a  New- 
foundland dog,  owned  by  a  carpenter  be- 
hind us,  bounces  over  the  five-foot  board 
fence  now  and  then,  alighting  with  exac- 
titude on  a  bed  of  gladiolus,  so  that  the 


2  NATURE   IN   A   CITY  YARD 

flowering  of  that  plant  is  a  surprise,  and  we 
lay  little  wagers  as  to  whether  or  not  there 
will  be  a  bloom  this  year. 

The  zoology  of  the  district  likewise  com- 
prises English  sparrows,  slimy  slugs,  and 
earth-worms.  Mosquitos  call  whenever 
the  wind  brings  them  in  from  the  fens  of 
Long  Island  and  the  meadows  of  New 
Jersey ;  and  we  are  liable  to  have  flies. 
There  are  beetles,  gnats,  fire-flies,  centi- 
pedes, and  a  rarely  visible  mouse.  In 
flower  time  we  enjoy  the  company  of  bees, 
both  honey  and  bumble,  vagrom  wasps, 
and  hornets  and  moths  and  butterflies  in 
great  numbers. 

Then,  let  's  see  :  we  have  a  cricket  or 
two,  and  a  periodical  delegation  of  grass- 
hoppers. We  have  stocked  the  place  with 
three  toads  and  a  turtle.  The  ability  of 
these  citizens  to  hide  themselves  in  a  space 
so  small  is  wonderful.  As  to  minor  deni- 
zens and  visitors,  their  name  is  legion,  and 
they  are  a  corrupt,  unconscionable,  per- 
nickety lot.  They  are  the  aphides,  the 
common  plant-lice  that  prey  by  myriads 
on  the  poppies  and  chrysanthemums,  the 


THE  YARD  3 

wood-lice  or  sow-bugs,  the  rose-bugs,  the 
McGonigle  boy,  the  caterpillars  that  strip 
the  zinnias,  the  blue  beetles  on  the  asters, 
the  mealybugs  that  spread  over  the  cacti,  the 
scale  that  dot  the  palms,  the  hard-shelled, 
many-legged  wire-worms  that  burrow 
through  and  kill  the  roots  of  bachelor-but- 
tons, and  our  experimental  louseworts,  coil- 
ing like  ammonites  when  shaken  out;  and 
we  stir  up  potato-bugs  and  seventeen-year 
locusts  when  we  gather  our  hay  crop  with 
a  lawn-mower. 

But  while  the  flora  and  fauna  of  the  re- 
gion are  not  exciting  or  numerous,  there 
are  more  of  both  than  you  would  suspect 
from  the  local  geography.  The  yard  is 
bounded  on  the  north  by  the  carpenter's 
yard,  with  its  piles  of  lumber;  on  the  east 
by  a  board  fence  and  a  lilac-bush ;  on  the 
west  by  small  boys  and  a  gravel  dump  — 
on  the  far  side,  to  be  sure,  of  three  other 
yards ;  on  the  south  by  the  two-story  and 
basement  brick  house  where  we  live. 

The  house  is  one  of  a  row  that  has  uni- 
formity without  duplication,  and  is  supplied 
with  all  modern  improvements  except  com- 


4  NATURE   IN  A   CITY  YARD 

fort,  low  rent,  protection  from  the  weather, 
and  a  few  other  matters.  Every  second  or 
third  house  in  this  row  has  what  appears 
from  the  front  to  be  a  small,  windowless 
gable.  But  it  is  n't.  It  is  a  flimsy  half 
pyramid  of  tin  and  wood,  about  four  feet 
high;  and  the  rent  of  a  house  crowned 
with  this  ornament  is  two  dollars  a  month 
extra. 

Our  neighbors  are  peaceable,  orderly 
people,  for  the  larger  part,  though  one  or 
two  of  them  do  play  popular  marches  on 
the  piano  with  their  windows  open.  But  on 
every  block  in  a  city,  as  in  every  village  in 
the  country  (the  number  of  inhabitants  in 
each  case  averaging  the  same),  there  is  sure 
to  be  a  boy  who  is  the  scorn,  the  by-word, 
and  to  a  certain  extent  the  terror,  of  the 
whole  community.  The  boy  on  our  row 
who  contains  sin,  vicariously,  for  the  rest 
of  us  is  Reginald  McGonigle,  the  son  of  a 
contractor  who  is  fairly  well  off  through  his 
political  privileges,  and  who  has  moved  in 
among  us,  to  the  general  uneasiness.  He 
— Michael,  not  Reginald — sits  on  his  door- 
step in  his  shirt  sleeves  at  evening,  smoking 


THE  YARD  5 

cigars  when  he  has  company  and  a  clay 
pipe  when  alone.  Reginald  goes  out  with 
a  tin  pail  to  a  saloon  on  another  street  from 
two  to  five  times  daily.  Asked  by  one  of 
us  why  he  did  so,  he  said  he  was  going  for 
yeast ;  then  he  thrust  out  his  chin,  extruded 
his  lower  lip  with  his  tongue,  looked  in- 
tensely cross-eyed,  pressed  his  thumb  at  the 
tip  of  a  blunt  and  dirty  nose,  and  gave  a 
waving  motion  to  his  fingers.  Reginald  is 
about  ten  years  of  age,  and  wears  knicker- 
bockers and  a  cap ;  but  there  is  no  form  of 
sin  known  to  centenarians  with  which 
he  is  not  on  terms  of  contemptuous  famil- 
iarity. 

He  has  freckles,  small,  round  eyes,  sul- 
len brows,  two  of  his  upper  teeth  are  always 
conspicuous,  his  hair  is  full  of  tumult  and 
suggestions,  his  clothes  are  expensive  but 
never  clean,  his  voice  is  loud  and  harsh, 
his  manner  imperative,  and  he  is  strong 
for  his  age.  When  interrupted  in  a  bur- 
glary or  a  murder,  he  looks  at  the  remon- 
strant with  majestic  calm,  and  after  hearing 
him  out  deigns  no  reply,  but  proceeds 
with  his  crime.  If,  however,  any  one  re- 


6  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

preaches  him  with  a  horsewhip  or  a  howit- 
zer, he  exhibits  a  pair  of  brisk  legs,  and 
disappears  into  his  own  stronghold,  from 
the  windows  of  which  he  leans  directly  af- 
ter, and  offers  shrill  and  reprehensible  criti- 
cisms. It  is  the  joy  of  his  life  to  injure 
animals  when  he  cannot  injure  people;  and 
not  a  dog  or  cat  in  the  vicinage  but  takes 
to  flight  when  he  appears.  He  has  broken 
more  windows  and  street  lamps,  trampled 
more  flowers,  secreted  for  his  own  behoof 
more  of  other  boys'  marbles,  knives,  and 
pennies,  blackened  more  eyes,  torn  down 
more  fences,  appropriated  more  ash-bar- 
rels for  bonfires,  smeared  mud  on  more 
little  girls'  dresses,  frightened  more  babies, 
put  tar  on  more  door-steps,  run  off  with 
more  bicycles,  misdirected  more  callers 
and  delivery-wagons,  and  is  oftener  tres- 
passing on  other  people's  premises,  than  all 
of  the  other  children  in  the  street.  When 
his  parents  are  visited  by  an  indignant 
committee,  they  ask  him  if  the  charges 
against  him  are  true,  and  he  modestly  ad- 
mits that  they  are  not.  So  the  parents 
turn  the  eye  of  astonishment  on  the  visi- 


THE  YARD  7 

tors,  and  the  incident  is  closed.  The  po- 
lice have  been  appealed  to  several  times ; 
but  Captain  Muldoon,  of  our  precinct,  is 
Mrs.  McGonigle's  cousin,  and,  somehow, 
nothing  seems  to  get  itself  done.  The 
McGonigle  oasis  in  our  otherwise  slow 
neighborhood  is  a  fateful  fixity. 

Our  yard,  though  partly  grown  to  grass 
and  clothes  lines  and  footprints,  is  bordered 
with  beds ;  and  we  have  a  diamond-shaped 
space  near  the  house  for  pelargoniums,  or 
"  Martha  Washington  geraniums,"  other 
geraniums,  and  coleus.  You  might  not 
believe  that  we  had  nearly  sixty  varieties 
of  plant  in  bloom  there  at  once  in  warm 
weather,  and  that  the  orchids  hanging  on 
the  house  wall  above  the  kitchen  windows, 
and  in  a  shady  corner,  in  pots,  flourished 
in  spite  of  the  forebodings  of  florists,  and 
even  made  bold,  some  of  them,  to  blossom 
in  a  window  next  winter.  People  think 
because  some  orchids  cost  a  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  perish  as  soon  as  you  get  them 
home, —  true  vegetable  aristocrats, —  that 
two-dollar  orchids  must  die  as  promptly 
and  with  equal  emphasis,  especially  if 


8  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

they  are  left  to  do  a  little  healthy  rough- 
ing it. 

It  took  an  appalling  amount  of  toil  to 
soften  the  yard  into  shape  for  agriculture. 
We  discovered,  after  moving,  that  the  whole 
block  stood  on  "  made  land  "  which  had 
been  dumped  into  a  hollow.  But  "  land  " 
is  a  relative  term.  Oh,  yes ;  there  is  some 
sand  and  there  are  some  pebbles  and  some 
rocks  in  the  soil;  but  its  richness  and  charm 
are  in  effete  hardware,  bed-springs,  ashes, 
bottles,  bones,  oyster-shells,  decayed  wood, 
hoop-skirts,  bird-cages,  silk  dresses,  china 
—  in  fact,  I  do  not  think  of  many  familiar 
objects  that  we  have  not  extracted  from  our 
yard  in  spading  up  the  flower-beds.  We 
took  up,  at  a  depth  of  hardly  more  than  a 
foot,  a  set  of  false  teeth.  (Archaeologists 
to  whom  we  showed  these  relics  thought 
that  they  did  not  belong  to  the  Indians.) 
At  another  time  I  extracted  a  piece  of 
glass  with  a  lovely  soap-bubble  effect  on  its 
surface,  like  that  on  the  old  tear-bottles  and 
ointment-jars  of  Cyprus.  It  was  not  a  tear- 
bottle, —  I  think  it  had  held  a  grief  too 
strong  for  tears  when  it  was  whole, —  but 


THE  YARD  9 

the  iridescence  acquired  in  a  few  years 
under  ground  showed  that  one  does  not 
have  to  go  to  the  east,  nor  even  to  the 
London  fakirs,  for  opalescent  glass.  Nor 
does  one  have  to  go  to  the  country  for 
some  greenery  and  flowers. 


II 

SKY 

ONE  thing  you  cannot  deprive  us  of 
entirely  when  you  put  up  your  houses 
and  factories  and  churches  around  us,  and 
that  is  the  sky.  You  may  poison  the  air 
for  us  close  to  the  earth  with  your  smudge, 
gas,  vapor,  dust,  and  evil  cookery ;  but  we 
can  always  look  out  from  our  wells  of  brick 
and  see  the  air  away  up  where  it  is  un- 
tainted —  a  sheet  of  sapphire  or  turquoise, 
with  pearl  or  silver  fretting ;  iriscent,  too, 
for  there  is  a  surprising  amount  of  color 
in  clouds. 

The  other  day  one  of  the  grandest  moun- 
tain-ranges above  the  world  was  revealed 
after  the  passage  of  a  hurrying  mist.  The 
Himalayas  boast  no  such  peaks  as  the  af- 
ternoon sun  fell  upon  when  the  fog  floor 
had  been  rafted  off  on  a  western  wind. 


SKY  II 

They  reached  for  miles  toward  the  zenith, 
and  spread  north  and  south  for  leagues  on 
leagues.  Their  tops  were  dazzling  white, 
and  their  sides  were  ruffled  into  countless 
snowy  bosses,  softly  edged  with  gray  and 
mauve;  while  descending  valleys  and  cav- 
erns, that  would  have  held  the  nations  of 
the  earth,  were  revealed  in  slaty  shadow. 
From  a  height  of  perhaps  a  thousand  feet 
hung  a  long  curtain  of  dark,  which  at  its 
northern  end  was  pulled  aside  as  if  by  an 
impetuous  giant  hand.  It  hid  the  base 
of  the  mountain-range,  and  seemed  to  be 
made  of  rain.  Not  until  next  day  did  we 
learn  of  the  cyclone  that  had  worked  in 
that  belt  of  dark,  felling  houses  and  trees 
within  five  miles  of  us,  and  then  bounding 
up  and  whistling  away  to  sea. 

We  lose  much  fine  scenery  because  of 
our  habit  of  looking  down.  We  look  down 
so  much  because  that  is  where  most  of  the 
dollars  come  from. 

A  friend  whose  word  I  never  had  cause 
to  doubt,  and  whose  any  statement  was  as 
good  as  gospel,  nearly  strained  my  credu- 
lity once,  and  I  made  him  tell  the  thing 


12  NATURE   IN  A  CITY  YARD 

over  to  be  sure  I  had  heard  aright.  He 
was  walking  in  a  park  on  a  balmy  day, 
delighting  in  the  May-time  budding  and 
twitter,  when  he  met  an  acquaintance  who 
was  taking  a  short  cut  across  the  park  from 
his  house  to  his  shop.  After  the  man- 
ner of  our  kind,  my  friend  nodded  to  the 
tradesman,  and  said  it  was  a  fine  morning. 
The  tradesman  looked  up  in  a  casual  way, 
as  if  he  had  heard  the  statement  before 
and  agreed  to  it ;  then,  catching  a  glimpse 
of  the  blue,  as  he  raised  his  head  out 
of  his  commercial  meditations,  he  asked, 
"  That  's  what  you  call  the  sky,  is  n't  it  ?  " 
And  he  was  sincere  about  it,  apparently. 

One  of  the  occasional  benefits  of  town 
life  is  the  chance  to  get  up  into  the  fifteenth 
or  twentieth  story  of  one  of  our  office-build- 
ings and  look  at  the  sky.  It  does  not 
strain  your  neck  in  that  way.  It  is  nearly 
equivalent  to  being  on  a  hill-top.  It  makes 
us  feel  as  if  some  oxygen  had  suddenly  en- 
tered the  atmosphere,  and  as  if  we  had 
found  room  to  open  our  lungs.  Our  im- 
aginations feel  the  widening  of  our  envi- 
ronment, and  our  eyes  are  so  constantly 


SKY  13 

invited  to  the  distance  that  I  wonder  how 
any  work  is  done  in  the  top  floors  of  the 
sky-scrapers  of  New  York,  where  the 
clerks  have  only  to  look  up  from  their  let- 
ters and  ledgers  to  see  the  rolling  country 
of  Long  Island,  the  Orange  Hills,  the  glit- 
tering harbor  with  its  islands,  and  the  hur- 
rying rivers.  But  poets  ought  to  be  made 
in  such  an  eyrie. 

When  we  look  away  to  the  horizon  we 
gladly  cheat  ourselves ;  we  let  our  fancies 
wander  into  things  that  are  not  there. 
Beneath  those  heavy  cumuli  must  be  a 
country  where  the  people  are  good  and 
wise,  where  there  are  no  Reginald  Mc- 
Gonigles,  where  every  home  is  a  palace, 
where  speech  is  music,  art  the  daily  life, 
and  love  instead  of  self-interest  the  cohesive 
social  force.  But  we  go  and  stand  under 
those  clouds  ;  then  we  discover  that  Uto- 
pia is  some  leagues  farther  on,  and  Arcadia 
some  miles  behind  us. 

It  is  not  often  that  we  appreciate  the 
size  of  clouds.  You  may  see  them  in 
Colorado  so  much  bigger  than  the  Rocky 
Mountains  that  the  tallest  peaks  become 


14  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

insignificant  by  contrast.  Warmed  air  is 
constantly  rising  from  the  earth,  and  as  it 
ascends  toward  the  chill  of  the  immensi- 
ties, the  moisture  it  holds  condenses  into 
fog  and  occasionally  into  rain.  The  upper 
edge  of  the  bed  of  warm  air  defines  its 
shape  by  the  form  of  the  cloud-bottoms 
that  rest  upon  it.  Floors  of  heavy  cloud 
average  level;  but  there  are  innumerable 
protuberances  and  depressions.  At  the 
top,  the  air  being  thinner,  the  clouds  ex- 
pand into  any  shape  they  please.  Away 
up,  miles  overhead,  where  the  air  is  too 
light  to  contain  or  support  masses  like  the 
cumuli,  the  vapor  feathers  into  cirri.  The 
cumuli,  the  summer  clouds,  which  deepen 
into  thunder-heads,  are  Alpine  in  their 
scenery  and  imposing  in  their  volume ; 
but  there  is  something  equally  fine  in  the 
cirrus  when  it  is  drawn  into  streams  of 
pallid  white,  like  the  banners  flung  from 
the  top  of  the  world  and  blown  by  electric 
currents  into  our  heavens.  Indeed,  on 
some  nights,  when  the  sky  is  charged  with 
cirri  that  faintly  reflect  the  city  lights,  it  is 
hard  to  say  whether  or  no  they  are  the  au- 


SKY  15 

rora  borealis;  for  with  gas-lights  and  lamps 
and  electric  glares  in  one's  eyes,  it  is  not 
easy  to  see  whether  they  are  pulsing. 
Only  after  midnight,  from  our  yard,  can  I 
be  sure  of  this. 

These  streams  of  cirrus  cloud  must  be  of 
enormous  length  sometimes.  You  realize 
it  when  you  see  their  parallel  lines  drawn 
together  in  each  direction  at  the  horizon, 
like  ridges  on  a  muskmelon.  But  they  are 
not  drawn  together.  They  appear  so  to 
us  because  they  are  in  perspective,  as  the 
sides  of  a  street  run  together  toward  the 
vanishing-point ;  and  as  we  can  see  a  moun- 
tain at  a  distance  of  a  hundred  miles  in  a 
clear  air,  so  in  that  clearer  air  above  the 
humid  stratum  we  doubtless  follow  these 
lines  at  least  as  far  in  each  direction,  or 
two  hundred  miles  in  all.  Occasionally  a 
cross  wind  scores  these  high  clouds  and 
combs  them  into  sections.  Then,  instead 
of  being  streamers,  they  become  endless 
regiments  marching  in  platoons  in  the 
same  direction  as  the  original  lines. 

Occasionally,  too,  the  cirrus  is  so  far  and 
thin  that  we  do  not  see  it  in  full  day, 


16  NATURE   IN  A  CITY  YARD 

probably  because  we  do  not  look  for  it; 
so  we  are  surprised  when  at  sunset  the  red 
lights  play  over  a  web  that  tents  in  the 
whole  sky;  and  as  the  lights  change  in 
color  and  climb  higher  with  the  falling  of 
the  sun,  we  see  that  it  is  not  merely  one 
film  of  cloud,  but  one  on  another;  half  a 
dozen,  perhaps.  Yet  we  said  that  the  sky 
was  clear.  What  weak  seers  we  are  ! 

In  storm,  especially  a  hot- weather  one, 
the  riding  up  of  the  celestial  navy  to  fire 
its  bolts  is  a  glorious  sight.  The  sky  is  an 
inverted  ocean,  and  whirling  on  its  tem- 
pestuous surface  come  the  black  and  threat- 
ening squadrons,  pennants  of  darkness 
streaming  in  their  wake,  woolly  films 
wreathing  at  their  bows.  They  speed 
across  the  void,  whirling,  twisting  in  mael- 
stroms, rising  and  falling,  occasionally  lost 
behind  the  black  sails  of  swifter  craft, 
emerging  to  view  again,  darker  and  more 
wicked  than  ever.  Then  comes  the  shot 
we  listen  for :  the  air  blazes,  and  a  roar  of 
wrath  goes  out.  The  musketry  of  rain  fol- 
lows; and  when  the  impenitent  earth  has 
been  properly  battered  and  drenched,  the 


SKY  17 

fleet  rides  off  to  other  shores,  and  the  sun 
is  out  again  with  healing.  But  in  all  this 
time  mankind  has  been  fussing  with  its 
umbrellas  and  waiting  in  doorways  for  a 
trolley-car. 

Our  yard  has  a  hammock  that  the  chil- 
dren use,  but  that  is  a  little  too  public  for 
grown  folks,  unless  it  is  after  dark,  or  is 
brought  near  to  the  house.  And  it  is  an 
invention  that  ought  to  attach  to  every 
residence,  or,  rather,  to  some  tree  near 
it.  If  it  could  be  occupied  by  some 
lazybones  who  would  manage  to  keep  his 
eyes  open,  there  is  hardly  a  doubt  that  he 
would  accumulate  some  truths  in  the  course 
of  a  summer ;  especially,  perhaps,  if  he 
slung  the  hammock  under  the  apples  or 
the  shade  maples. 

For  the  nearest  approach  to  a  new  ex- 
perience is  to  lie  under  a  tree.  It  is  even 
more  strange  and  more  an  inversion  of  our 
conceit  than  it  is  to  look  about  under  wa- 
ter. In  the  bed  of  a  river  things  appear 
much  as  they  do  when  you  look  toward 
the  bottom  from  the  bank,  and  the  distress 
of  holding  your  breath  after  the  first  half 


18  NATURE  IN  A   CITY  YARD 

minute  is  likely  to  make  you  neglect  the 
landscape ;  but  lie  flat,  face  up,  beneath  a 
tree  (if  you  have  n't  one,  a  big  azalea  like 
the  one  in  our  yard  will  do),  and  you  will 
realize  that  you  never  appreciated  arboreal 
anatomy  before.  How  light  and  strong  it 
is,  how  full  of  lessons  for  engineers  and 
builders  and  painters !  And  it  is  so  un- 
accustomed; the  tangents  in  the  boughs 
are  so  unexpected ;  the  masses  of  leaf, 
flower,  and  fruit  are  so  remarkable;  it  is 
so  inspiring  to  see  that  castle  in  the  air,  so 
light,  so  fairy-like,  yet  so  sturdy  and  tough, 
with  the  birds  and  bees  and  butterflies  seek- 
ing its  entrances  ! 

Strangest  of  all  is  that  it  impresses  one 
in  a  vague  way  with  a  consciousness  of  its 
strength  and  purpose.  What  made  it  bend 
this  bough  to  avoid  another  ?  Why  did  it 
thin  out  its  leaves  here,  where  it  was  likely 
to  clash  them  against  another  branchful  ? 
You  wonder  if  they  hear  and  know,  these 
trees,  all  that  is  said  and  done  by  the 
clumsy  black  beetles  on  two  legs  that 
crawl  over  their  roots. 

If  you  can't  look  up  into  a  tree  for  ex- 


SKY  19 

perience,  look  at  the  clouds.  The  sky  is 
so  common  a  luxury  that  we  deny  it  to 
ourselves.  But  if  your  eyes  are  strong,  lie 
on  a  bank  of  wild  thyme,  or  something, 
and  just  stare  into  the  zenith.  It  is  not  so 
poetic  if  you  have  to  wear  blue  glasses ;  but 
the  light  of  the  sun  reflected  from  moun- 
tains of  snowy  cumulus,  or  even  the  far-off 
and  filmy  tissues  of  the  cirri,  nay,  even  the 
light  that  fills  the  unclouded  air,  is  more 
piercing  than  you  have  supposed.  So,  if 
your  eye  can  endure  it,  sprawl  on  the  wild 
thyme  in  your  yard,  or  in  your  hammock, 
close  enough  in  the  shadow  of  the  house  to 
be  out  of  view  of  the  neighbors,  and  watch 
those  moving  mountains,  more  vast  in  bulk 
than  the  Balkans,  as  magnificent  in  scenery 
as  Greenland,  piled  into  space  for  miles 
above  your  head  —  watch  these  marble 
domes  as  they  are  wheeled  across  the 
heavens  in  the  wind's  track,  sometimes 
crumbling  down  in  misty  ribbons  at  a  dis- 
tance, sometimes  turning  black  and  bellow- 
ing and  belching  flood  and  fire  and  terror 
near  at  hand.  The  life  of  the  air  is  a  reve- 
lation. It  is  as  much  so  as  the  life  of  space 


20  NATURE   IN  A  CITY  YARD 

as  we  view  it  through  the  telescope,  or  the 
life  of  stagnant  water  when  we  see  it  in  the 
microscope,  or  the  life  in  the  ground  when 
we  stir  the  earth  in  spring.  What  are  those 
birds  that  cross  the  vision  at  mountain 
height,  mere  specks  against  the  argosies  of 
silver  ?  Eagles,  are  they,  or  hawks,  or  con- 
dors and  such  strange  winged  creatures  of 
other  lands,  spying  out  the  country  ?  Or 
are  they  archa^opteryces,  plesiosauri,  and 
pterodactyls  left  over  from  the  age  of  sau- 
rians  and  afraid  to  come  down,  knowing 
that  man,  the  fiercest  of  destroyers,  would 
stuff  them  and  put  them  into  his  museums  ? 
Youngsters  make  more  use  of  their  eyes 
and  nature  than  we,  and  they  can  probably 
tell  us  more  about  the  sky  than  we  see. 
Their  fresh  fancies  find  odd  creatures  in 
the  air.  My  youngest,  standing  at  the 
window,  called  to  his  mother  to  look  at  the 
horses.  She,  hearing  no  sound  of  hoofs  on 
the  pavement,  answered  that  there  were  no 
horses  near.  "  Yes,"  he  insisted ;  "  cloud 
horses,  galloping  in  the  sky." 

How    apt    these    babes    are    in    their 
speeches !     There  is  beauty  in  their  abso- 


SKY  21 

lute  simplicity.  It  is  like  the  poetry  of  the 
Indians.  A  little  relative  of  mine  died  on 
St.  Valentine's  day,  and  one  of  his  play- 
mates said,  "  He  will  be  God's  Valentine, 
mama."  Harold,  in  the  yard,  says,  "The 
dandelions  are  getting  old :  see  their  white 
hair."  Like  all  infants,  he  amuses  us  by 
the  quaintness  and  unexpectedness  of  his 
observations.  Seeing  a  hearse  returning 
from  a  funeral  with  the  driver's  official  tile 
inside,  he  whispered  impressively,  "That 
man's  going  to  bury  his  hat."  And  talk- 
ing of  a  young  man  who  speaks  in  a  meek, 
high  soprano,  he  informed  us  that  "  Mr. 
E had  feathers  in  his  voice." 

Even  a  town  yard  is  incomplete  without 
children.  They  are  trying,  sometimes,  and 
they  do  not  value  the  pet  plants  as  you  do  ; 
but  you  may  console  yourself  with  the 
thought  that  if  they  did  not  break  them, 
Reginald  McGonigle  would ;  and  if  he 
did  n't,  the  beetles,  caterpillars,  lice,  and 
worms  would  eat  them.  The  views  of 
youngsters  on  nature  and  mankind  are  the 
only  original  ones  that  we  hear. 

To  look  skyward  again :  One  night,  after 


22  NATURE   IN  A  CITY  YARD 

the  passage  of  a  thunder-storm,  I  looked 
southward,  and  there,  through  the  haze, 
appeared  a  long  jag  of  lightning  photo- 
graphed on  the  sky.  It  did  not  flicker :  it 
simply  stayed.  It  was  much  more  startling 
than  a  lively  flash.  And  two  or  three  sec- 
onds elapsed  before  I  made  out  that  the 
seam  of  pale  light  was  merely  the  edge  of 
a  cumulus  cloud,  high  up,  showing  through 
a  rift  in  the  reek,  and  lighted  by  a  moon 
invisible  from  the  earth. 

And  these  things  are  seen  as  easily  in 
the  town  as  in  the  country,  and  we  make  a 
pretense  of  liking  them  as  well  through  the 
window  as  in  the  pasture.  Perhaps  the 
restriction  of  our  ground  scenery  forces  at- 
tention to  the  sky.  I  know  that  certain 
sunsets  and  sunrises  have  been  beautiful, 
though  roofs  and  spires  have  risen  against 
them.  I  know  that  the  fan  of  sunbeams 
piercing  holes  in  a  cloud  blanket  —  what 
country  people  call  "  the  sun  drawing  wa- 
ter "  — is  at  least  as  striking  from  the  yard 
as  it  is  when  I  see  it  from  the  favorite  hill 
in  Vermont,  though  one  cannot  see  the 
lighted  spots  in  the  landscape  where  these 


SKY  23 

rays  fall.  I  know  that  when  snow  flies  the 
flakes  spring  out  of  the  gray  emptiness  in 
the  same  bewildering  way  as  in  the  fields, 
and  that  each  flake  is  as  marvelous  a  crys- 
tal as  if  it  fell  in  Canada.  I  know  that  even 
in  these  dull  precincts  the  color  splen- 
dors of  the  clouds  are  as  obvious  as  in  the 
country — and  as  unregarded.  We  seldom 
realize  these  colors.  But  put  a  tub  of  wa- 
ter in  the  yard  on  a  cloudy  day,  stand 
where  the  sun  is  reflected  in  it,  and  as 
the  clouds  pass  watch  this  water  mirror  and 
mark  how  they  kindle.  They  do  not  show 
rainbows,  but  delicate  and  shelly  lusters, 
fleeting,  tender,  fairy-like.  You  can  bear 
to  see  these  reflections,  because  the  whole 
sky  is  not  blazing  into  your  eyes.  Then, 
the  clear,  open  firmament :  nothing  is  finer. 
The  winter  of  space  is  suggested,  merely, 
and  glorified  in  the  turquoise,  windy  skies 
of  autumn. 

It  is  in  autumn  that  there  is  a  kind  of 
glow  in  the  air  as  well  as  in  the  trees.  The 
leaves  seem  to  throw  their  color  to  the  sky, 
where  it  is  reflected  back  upon  the  earth, 
as  the  white  of  a  polar  ice-cap  shines  into 


24  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

the  clouds  above  it.  And  this  is  not  all 
illusion,  for  the  southing  sun  loses  its  heat- 
rays,  and  the  chemical  light  that  comes 
through  the  air  is  red. 

Looking  skyward  one  is  face  to  face 
with  eternity.  How  futile,  yet  inevitable, 
to  put  the  questions  suggested  to  himself 
and  to  unanswering  space  and  time  by  that 
vision  !  He  tries  to  think  back  to  the  time 
in  eternity  when  matter  did  not  exist,  and 
concludes  it  always  did  exist.  And  he 
wonders  if  the  universe  is  evolution  or 
creation.  And  is  order  mind,  or  has  mind 
developed  from  order  ?  And  in  the  future 
suns  burn  out,  only  to  have  their  ashes 
swept  up  by  comets,  scouts  and  scavengers 
of  space,  and  hurled  together  with  such 
fury  that  they  become  gaseous  with  heat, 
condense,  reform  into  suns  and  planets, 
and  the  drama  goes  on  again,  endlessly. 
With  a  spectator  ?  Ah,  useless  to  ask  and 
wonder.  Truth  is  in  a  well,  so  deep  she 
cannot  come  to  us,  nor  we  descend  to  her. 
Let  us  be  content  to  love  and  admire, 
create  and  maintain,  live  and  improve.  It 
is  all — and  the  best — we  can  do. 


Ill 

CITY   AND   COUNTRY   LIFE 

OUR  yard  is  only  an  epitome  of  and 
substitute  for  the  real  thing,  which  is 
the  country.  I  do  not  live  in  town  because 
I  want  to,  but  because  I  must.  The  trade  I 
learned  can  be  practised  only  in  town ;  its 
pay  is  apt  to  be  so  restricted  that  retire- 
ment on  one's  savings  from  the  practice 
of  it  is  practically  unheard  of;  and  I  want 
to  educate  the  children.  There  are  no 
groves  of  Academus,  or  I  would  pack  them 
off  forthwith,  and  perhaps  occupy  some 
adjacent  cabin,  and  devote  myself  to  rais- 
ing potatoes  and  Cain  for  their  Saturday 
holiday.  In  the  nearly  hopeless  hope  of 
some  day  having  a  home  in  the  village  of 
my  fathers,  there  being  free  to  deal  sau- 
cily with  mankind  and  take  walks,  I  find 
few  sympathizers ;  for  is  not  art  more  than 


26  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

nature  ?  man  more  than  mountains?  much 
acquaintance  more  than  few?  No, — to 
each  of  these  propositions.  A  mob  is 
physically  and  mentally  repellent  to  me, 
and  its  clothes  and  its  behavior  have  little 
to  do  with  this  repugnance.  Nature  means 
liberty,  and  liberty  means  life. 

Mr.  Bellamy's  hopeful  but  fanciful  econ- 
omy has  not  considered  one  of  the  origins 
for  the  evils  that  threaten  us:  crowding. 
Americans  are  growing  afraid  of  that 
wholesome  rural  life  that  gave  force  and 
composure  to  their  fathers,  and  that  is  re- 
flected so  sweetly  by  the  English  and  New 
England  writers.  They  are  falling  into  the 
town  habit,  which,  like  most  habits,  grows 
by  what  it  feeds  on,  and  is  commonly  ac- 
quired by  crediting  the  fallacy  that  life, 
society,  gaiety,  art,  letters,  learning,  and 
all  forms  of  progress  come  of  physical 
aggregation. 

What  force  is  in  numbers,  except  brute 
force  ?  Because  we  do  justice,  keep  order, 
and  claim  privileges  for  each  other,  does 
it  follow  that  we  must  associate  with  all 
men,  including  dirty  men,  mean  men, 


CITY  AND   COUNTRY  LIFE  27 

drunken  men  ?  Our  very  admiration  for 
the  best  human  qualities  makes  the  lower 
of  them  more  offensive.  Cream  comes  to 
the  top  of  big  pans,  but  you  get  as  much 
of  it  from  half  the  quantity  of  milk  if  the 
quality  is  twice  as  good.  Cities  cast  their 
best  people  to  the  top,  perhaps;  but  how 
many  sordid  folks  a  single  wise  man  stands 
for;  how  much  poverty  is  required  to 
make  a  rich  man ;  how  few  are  good  and 
gentle,  compared  with  the  rough  and  vul- 
gar ;  and  how  little  the  goodness  of  the 
few  benefits  the  many !  Yet  the  plague 
of  it  is  that  a  company  of  quiet  and  con- 
genial people  is  not  allowed  to  settle  by 
itself.  Directly  it  has  done  so,  those  round 
about  cry,  "  Hello  !  here  's  a  chance  to 
get  into  a  jam!"  and  they  edge  their  way 
in  until  the  original  settlers  are  fain  to 
make  their  way  out. 

Aggregation  presupposes  weakness  in 
the  individual.  The  farmer  not  only  sows, 
reaps,  hoes,  and  gathers,  but  he  drives 
nails,  saws  wood,  keeps  accounts,  cuts  ice, 
kills  pigs,  is  trustee  of  the  village  library, 
and  deacon  in  the  church.  He  is  the  best 


28  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

type  of  man  we  have,  because  he  is  a  man 
whose  expediences  are  so  many  that  he 
suffices  to  himself.  He  lives  his  own  life, 
and  leaves  strong  sons  to  man  the  cities. 
If  he  were  in  town  he  would  stick  at  some 
one  trade,  or  some  department  of  a  trade, 
and  hire  his  nailing,  sawing,  accounting, 
and  killing ;  for  in  the  specialization  of 
business,  begotten  of  large  manufactures, 
the  city  man's  limitations  of  industry  are 
narrowing  every  year.  When  one  has  not 
self-poise  to  stand  by  himself,  or  to  do 
his  work  without  company,  he  topples  into 
a  town,  and  the  neighbors  help  him  as  he 
helps  the  neighbors  :  they  wedge  together, 
so  that  none  may  tip  over. 

The  coarseness  of  city  life  is  usually 
sorest  to  those  who  are  best  able  to  keep 
aloof.  It  is  courted  by  those  who  would 
be  better  away  from  it :  the  tenement  pop- 
ulation. The  drinking,  the  righting,  the 
yelling,  the  sickness,  closeness,  vice,  igno- 
rance, and  slum  politics  disgust  the  visitor; 
but  the  resident  glories  in  them,  for  to  him 
they  express  society. 

Wretched  is  that  man  who  has  no  re- 


CITY  AND  COUNTRY  LIFE  29 

sources  within  himself,  who  accepts  any 
company  rather  than  no  company,  who  is 
afraid  to  be  alone,  who  sits  by  the  hour  on 
the  door-step  of  a  seething  barrack,  survey- 
ing a  landscape  of  rookeries,  pavements, 
telegraph-poles,  and  ash-barrels,  breathing 
stenches,  thinking  leanly  and  meanly,  hear- 
ing the  din  made  by  harsh  and  dirty  thou- 
sands, because  that  is  society.  Wretched 
is  that  man  who  must  ride  only  on  drags 
or  in  dog-carts,  in  certain  avenues;  who 
must  dress  three  times  a  day,  wear  a  mon- 
ocle, carry  his  cane  head  down,  call  only 
on  certain  people,  always  be  dancing,  talk- 
ing, driving  —  who,  in  short,  must  live  for 
show ;  for  that,  too,  is  supposed  to  be  nec- 
essary to  society. 

The  desertion  of  the  country,  with  its 
health,  its  beauty,  its  freedom,  its  practical 
charms  of  cheapness  and  room,  must  change 
the  character  of  the  people.  It  may  not 
be  true  that  the  rapid  life  and  the  wear 
of  incessant  noise  in  town  are  shortening 
our  years  and  enfeebling  our  nerves ;  but  it 
is  certain  that  the  American  of  to-day  has 
not  the  content  and  calm  that  belonged  to 


30  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

his  ancestors ;  that  he  is  not  a  fruitful  par- 
ent ;  that  his  pleasures,  being  artificial,  are 
taken  in  hot,  crowded  rooms;  and  that 
jealousy  and  rivalry  are  more  common  than 
they  were. 

If  crowding  has  the  merits  that  are 
claimed  for  it,  we  ought  to  see  its  result 
A  certain  glib  smartness  is  more  common 
than  it  used  to  be,  but  illiteracy  is  not 
decreasing,  and  as  to  the  great  results  of 
scientific  investigation  and  artistic  aspira- 
tion, how  many  in  the  crowd  are  touched 
by  them?  How  many  of  New  York's  east- 
side  million  know  about,  or  are  advantaged 
by,  the  work  of  the  painters,  statuaries, 
architects,  poets,  dramatists  ?  How  many 
of  them  ever  heard  of  Huxley,  Darwin, 
Emerson,  Edison,  Pasteur,  Rontgen,  the 
men  who  move  the  world ;  and  how  many 
of  the  world-movers  could  think  or  act  in 
the  throng  ?  Fancy  Emerson  meditating 
in  the  clatter  of  a  hotel,  Edison  perfecting 
his  inventions  in  a  city  office,  Darwin  mak- 
ing scientific  investigations  in  a  "flat"  or  a 
boarding-house  !  Even  the  actor,  by  na- 
ture and  calling  the  most  social  of  the  ar- 


CITY  AND  COUNTRY  LIFE  31 

tists,  has  to  gain  seclusion  to  think  out  his 
part,  invent  action,  and  memorize  text. 

To  leave  that  abode  of  greed,  envy,  anx- 
iety, and  excess,  the  modern  town,  with 
its  extremes  of  wealth  and  poverty,  for 
an  hour  of  country  life  —  life  with  trees, 
rocks,  streams,  and  tuneful,  uncomplaining 
things  —  is  paradise.  One  gets  back  the 
health  of  a  tired  mind,  and  more  minds 
are  tired  now  than  in  our  fathers'  day.  If 
it  wearies  a  man  to  be  with  gentler,  wilder 
organisms  than  men,  the  reason  is  that  he 
is  incomplete  and  does  not  think,  read, 
study,  observe,  eat,  sleep,  walk,  or  work 
as  a  healthy  man  should.  He  flings  him- 
self before  society,  and  demands  to  be 
amused. 

What  is  the  cure,  or  is  there  none? 
Persuasion  accomplishes  nothing.  In  hard 
times,  when  thousands  are  asking  food, 
clothing,  and  coal  from  the  thrifty,  and 
tramping  the  roads  declaring  their  distress, 
the  farmers  cannot  get  help,  and  families 
in  the  country  cannot  procure  service. 
No  offer  of  work  is  considered  unless  it 
is  accompanied  by  a  promise  of  society. 


32  NATURE  IN   A  CITY  YARD 

The  villages  themselves  do  not  ask  for 
population.  They  lack  the  local  patriot- 
ism that  might  put  them  into  competition 
with  the  town.  They  are  slow  to  increase 
or  improve  the  benefits  of  corporate  life : 
good  roads,  trees,  parks,  schools,  libraries, 
sanitary  appliances,  and  access  to  the  arts. 

The  establishment  of  an  exile  for  the 
useless  would  be  a  blessing  not  to  the 
towns  alone.  The  crowding  of  the  West 
and  the  filling  up  of  trades  and  professions 
will  do  something  to  bring  farming  into 
vogue  again.  But  perhaps  increased  in- 
telligence and  increased  rent  promise  best 
for  the  restoration  of  rural  life.  It  is 
growing  more  difficult  every  year  for  peo- 
ple of  moderate  incomes  to  remain  in  town 
under  conditions  that  enable  them  to  retain 
health  and  self-respect.  Taxes  do  not  in- 
crease in  rate,  but  rents  do ;  and  the  tenant 
who  pays  both  gets  less  and  less  for  his 
money  as  the  streets  fill  up  and  his  air 
and  light  are  taken  away. 

The  saddest  part  of  the  town  habit  is 
the  injury  it  entails  on  children.  Young 
folks  want  earth  to  sport  on  and  oxygen  to 


CITY  AND   COUNTRY   LIFE  33 

breathe,  as  plants  do ;  and  they  get  a  few 
feet  of  pavement  where  they  play  ball  when 
the  police  are  not  looking.  The  poor 
creatures  become  like  animals  in  cages, 
and  their  delight  in  grass,  trees,  hills,  and 
running  waters,  when  they  reach  them,  is 
pathetic.  Their  parents  cheat  them  of 
their  birthright. 

Pessimism,  which  we  find  in  all  forms 
of  art, —  even  in  the  drama,  which  has 
brought  an  Ibsen,  a  Zola,  a  Sudermann, 
and  a  Maeterlinck  to  its  service, — is  a  phil- 
osophy of  exhaustion.  It  is  as  foreign  to 
the  natural  man  as  it  would  be  to  brutes. 
That  it  is  not  accepted  by  the  masses  is 
hopeful ;  that  many  are  acquiring  country 
places  and  prolonging  their  vacations,  is 
hopeful ;  that  a  new  interest  has  been 
aroused  in  science  —  nature — is  hopeful; 
that  fresh-air  funds  have  been  started  in 
every  city,  is  most  hopeful.  Out  of  the  great 
hives  of  brick  and  mortar  another  genera- 
tion may  send  away  many  to  live  in  health, 
to  think  their  own  thought,  to  become  the 
staminates  of  a  mushy  and  ineffectual  so- 
ciety. In  that  generation  the  delights 


34  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

of  independent  living  will  be  appreciated 
once  more. 

Meeting  some  country  people,  and  not- 
ing how  little  they  seem  to  care  for  nature, 
how  concerned  they  are  with  small  things, 
how  their  ambitions  turn  toward  the  city, 
one  feels  that  he  must  look  for  a  human 
balance,  like  that  of  the  rotation  of  crops, 
the  town  folk  returning  to  the  country  to 
restore  their  exhausted  energies,  say  every 
fifty  years,  and  the  rustics  going  to  town, 
in  exchange,  with  their  high  vitality  and 
their  practical  ways  and  sense,  to  run  the 
affairs  of  society.  Yet  we  mistake  when 
we  charge  invariable  discontent  against  the 
farmer.  He  may  have  a  silly  notion,  like 
others  of  us,  that  he  would  like  to  be 
President;  but  he  does  not  consent  to  stand 
behind  a  counter  or  scribble  at  a  desk  in 
order  to  do  it.  Sometimes  he  really  en- 
joys the  health  and  liberty  and  landscape 
to  which  he  is  heir,  and  envies  the  citizen 
not  a  whit.  One  of  the  unlikeliest  con- 
verts to  rural  life  that  I  have  met  is  a  ped- 
dler, fifty-eight  years  old,  who,  having  lost 
an  arm  in  a  railroad  accident,  gains  a  pre- 


CITY  AND   COUNTRY  LIFE  35 

carious  livelihood  by  selling  brushes  and 
pills  through  New  Jersey,  lower  New  York, 
and  eastern  Pennsylvania. 

I  quickly  found  that  condolences  were 
thrown  away  on  him.  He  prided  himself 
on  the  extent  of  his  acquaintance,  and  the 
fact  that  many  of  the  farmers  cheerfully 
gave  him  a  meal  and  lodging  when  he 
appeared.  He  was  particular  about  his 
lodging.  Beds  he  did  not  countenance; 
but  a  blanket  on  the  porch  or  in  the  hay- 
mow suited  him  exactly.  He  believed  in 
the  virtues  of  air,  and  when  storm-bound 
in  the  mountains  made  no  bones  of  lying 
under  a  rock  or  fallen  tree, —  however 
much  his  bones  may  have  made  of  him, — 
with  a  burning  log  at  his  feet.  He  had 
not  been  ill  for  an  hour  since  he  began  his 
wandering  life.  The  tramps  never  worried 
him,  and  he  was  able  to  sell  enough  to 
keep  out  of  the  poorhouse.  In  winter  he 
lived  on  a  farm  with  a  man  who  drove  a 
butcher's  wagon,  and  had  no  legs. 

This  little  old  man,  with  his  butternut 
clothes,  had  no  book  education  ;  but  there 
was  a  marked  sympathy  with  nature  in 


36  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

him.  While  we  talked  together,  he  strolled 
to  and  fro.  Noticing  the  stars, —  it  was 
after  nine  o'clock  at  night, —  he  said  that 
he  often  did  his  tramping  after  sunset  in 
summer,  "  because  it  was  n't  so  hot  then  "; 
and  in  spite  of  his  years,  his  short  legs,  his 
basket,  and  his  calls,  he  occasionally  made 
twenty  miles  in  a  day.  Of  all  men,  to  his 
mind,  the  farmers  were  the  best  off,  be- 
cause, while  the  rich  might  lose  every- 
thing in  a  bad  season,  the  farmer  had  his 
roof,  his  fire-wood,  and  his  food.  With 
these  he  could  defy  the  fates.  He  wanted 
little  of  cities.  He  had  seen  a  building 
thirteen  stories  high,  and  "they  wanted 
$8  a  month  on  the  top  floor,  while  out  in 
Jersey  you  can  buy  a  house,  sheds,  well, 
patch  of  ground,  and  orchard  for  $600." 
He  reported  some  adventures  with  dogs, 
but  few  of  them  exciting.  One  night, 
while  sleeping  in  an  arbor,  he  was  awak- 
ened by  the  arrival  of  another  man,  who 
passed  a  few  words  with  him,  and  likewise 
lay  down  to  sleep  on  a  plank.  In  the 
morning  he  discovered  that  his  quondam 
neighbor  was  richly  dressed,  and  sported 


CITY  AND  COUNTRY  LIFE  37 

a  gold  watch  and  chain.  "  He  was  sensi- 
ble, that  man  was:  he  liked  air."  And, 
after  all,  thousands  of  New  Yorkers  sleep, 
or  try  to,  in  the  streets  on  broiling,  sul- 
try August  nights.  Only,  they  don't  wear 
gold  watches. 

The  merit  of  such  a  life,  and  of  all  rural 
life,  is  its  individualism  and  independence, 
its  modesty,  bravery,  and  self-sufficing- 
ness.  Men  are  a  part  of  nature,  and  can- 
not help  it ;  yet  the  world  is  full  of  vain 
striving  to  get  away  from  this  fixity  and 
fate.  The  men  wear  starched  collars,  nar- 
row shoes,  and  hard  hats,  and  the  women 
wear  tight  foot-covering  and  corsets  —  the 
aim  in  each  case  being  to  be  as  little  like 
men  and  women  as  they  can.  They  do 
not  care  to  be  reminded  of  nature.  Better 
the  farmer,  the  hunter,  the  wood-chopper, 
who  eats  with  his  knife,  and  is  at  home  in 
the  woods  and  at  one  with  them,  than  the 
affected,  lisping,  dawdling  fop  of  the  town. 
The  clearest,  if  not  the  deepest,  minds 
ought  to  be  found  in  the  country,  and 
frankness  is  apt  to  be  a  rural  trait.  Bacon 
objects  to  a  naked  mind.  I  wonder  if  our 


38  NATURE  IN   A  CITY  YARD 

commonplaces  struck  him  as  nudities,  and 
if  he  approved  our  social  fibs  as  coverings. 
We  wear  only  our  hands  and  faces  visible 
now ;  but  commonly,  when  we  expose  the 
mind,  there  are  no  reservations.  And  of 
what  avail  are  these  things  we  say  to  each 
other  or  assent  to  about  weather  and  poli- 
tics ?  One  look  at  the  hills  is  worth  the 
talk  of  a  multitude  as  to  what  the  weather 
is,  because  the  weather  is  there,  without 
comment,  and  all  weathers  have  their  wel- 
comes and  their  uses.  Woods,  plains, 
seas,  vary  every  hour :  but  how  few  of  us 
know  it ;  for,  alas !  we  have  become  afraid 
of  nature.  The  woods  are  full  of  bogies, 
the  sea  of  krakens,  the  fields  of  malaria. 
Shut  the  windows,  bar  the  doors,  converse 
on  politics,  and  keep  nature  out. 

Content  in  the  city  is  difficult.  In  youth 
it  is  not  commendable.  But  when  the  ob- 
jects of  life  are  gained,  either  in  money 
or  place  or  occupation,  when  middle  age 
fixes  us  in  our  ways,  comfort  of  mind  is  to 
be  desired.  And  what  a  rare  thing  is  con- 
tent —  satisfaction  with  the  present !  We 
live  in  the  past  or  future,  memory  or  hope, 


CITY  AND   COUNTRY  LIFE  39 

or  in  the  imagination  of  impossibilities. 
Our  touch  with  passing  facts  is  as  light  as 
we  might  think  our  hold  was  on  the  future. 
Seldom  in  our  lives  do  we  cry,  as  Faust, 
"Stay,  flying  moment:  thou  art  fair."  But 
if  the  hour  strikes  when  we  may,  we  hear 
it  in  the  country. 


IV 
WINTER 

T7XCEPT  for  its  varying  physical  geog- 
-L/  raphy,  the  back  yard  gets  little  at- 
tention in  winter.  Perhaps  it  deserves  to 
be  looked  at  oftener,  for  snow  will  drift 
in  fantastic  shapes,  and  we  have  miniature 
mountain-ranges  and  plateaus,  and,  in 
thaws,  an  extensive  system  of  lakes.  Our 
arctic  scenery  does  not  stay  arctic.  Its 
gloss  and  whiteness  are  dulled  by  smoke 
and  dust,  and  the  feet  of  birds  and  cats, 
by  dropped  leaves  of  withering  plants,  and 
by  the  undetected  yet  pervading  foulness 
of  city  air.  And  in  the  longest,  sharpest 
winter  the  juices  of  the  grass  and  shrubs 
are  not  frozen,  like  the  surface  moisture, 
but  are  merely  locked  in  the  roots  until 
the  sun  calls  them  into  the  stalks,  or  makes 
new  leaves  to  busy  themselves  in,  when 
March  arrives. 


WINTER  41 

When  it  is  not  covered  with  snow,  or, 
rather,  dappled  with  it,  the  yard  is  dull 
and  brown,  at  first  glance,  and  the  white 
carpet  is  pierced  by  dry  stems  and  ragged 
leaves.  But  go  out  with  green  in  your 
mind,  and  it  is  surprising  what  an  answer 
of  green  you  get  from  the  earth.  The 
kalmia's  leaves  are  leathery,  yet  they  keep 
a  lot  of  color,  and  its  stalks  are  tipped 
with  stout  buds,  securely  waiting  the  ver- 
nal equinox.  The  honeysuckle  —  indis- 
pensable plant  —  retains  its  foliage ;  its 
shiny  black  berries  drop  first,  the  leaves 
taking  a  slaty  hue,  and  finally  bronzing 
into  olive.  Shreds  of  gourd-vine  hang  to 
the  fence,  and  the  long  ropes  of  morning- 
glory  on  the  house  hold  hundreds  of  their 
blossom-cups,  mere  stars;  but  the  green 
has  wholly  died  from  them.  The  iris  fades 
only  after  repeated  nippings,  and  the  chry- 
santhemum has  to  be  told  often  that  it  is 
winter.  After  the  first  frosts  I  find  that 
the  chrysanthemums,  salvia,  bellis,  hydran- 
gea, petunia,  verbena,  alyssum,  daisy,  and 
dandelion  stand  it  best.  A  pet  dandelion 
bloomed  after  several  frosts,  and  another 


42  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

one  came  into  flower  at  Christmas,  during 
one  of  the  insipid  winters  that  we  have 
along  the  fortieth  parallel. 

But  it  is  the  grass  that  keeps  its  color 
best.  After  a  succession  of  mild  days  it 
really  grows,  and  under  the  top-dressing 
clover  is  often  found  to  have  started. 
Grass  will  become  dry  and  brown  in  time, 
but  the  algae  on  wood,  especially  on  tree- 
trunks,  never  do  so.  They  keep  fresh  and 
bright  through  every  winter,  and  snow 
and  rain  serve  only  to  intensify  their  color. 
Thoreau  was  nearly  right  when  he  said 
that  it  took  a  lichenist  to  see  how  a  tree- 
trunk  looked.  He  might  have  added  — 
and  an  artist.  The  artist  is  the  only  one 
who  sees  things  as  they  are.  The  rest  of 
us  see  what  we  think  ought  to  be  there, 
and  overlook  many  things  equally  impor- 
tant that  are  there. 

Vegetation  wants  but  a  kindly  hour  to 
bring  it  up.  On  a  February  morning,  in 
a  calm  between  two  blizzards,  although  it 
was  by  no  means  sultry,  clover  was  found 
half  an  inch  out  of  the  earth ;  and  three 
days  later,  in  another  mild  spell,  the  warm 


WINTER  43 

warble  of  a  bird  was  heard  across  the  roofs. 
(Pity  me  that  I  don't  know  what  kind  of 
a  bird  it  was!)  In  mid- January,  after  a 
longish  spell  of  cold,  I  have  found  fresh 
leaves  of  buttercup  and  bellis  and  dande- 
lion under  the  mulch. 

After  heavy  winter  rains,  followed  by  a 
quick  freeze,  the  puddles  crust  over  with 
ice,  and  the  water,  soaking  into  the  earth, 
—  partially  evaporating,  too,  perhaps, — 
leaves  this  ice  a  mere  shell  over  nothing. 
Where  the  freezing  has  been  irregular  be- 
cause of  wind,  spiky  ridges  a  foot  and 
more  in  length  —  true  crystals,  doubtless — 
may  be  traced  in  the  ice  like  Cuphic  sym- 
bols on  a  rock.  And  I  wonder  if  we  have 
got  nothing  out  of  ice  and  drifts  and  icicles 
for  our  arts  in  all  these  years.  No  Gothic 
pendents,  think  you  ?  No  roofs,  and  eaves, 
and  pediments  ?  No  tessellations  ?  No 
mural  ornaments  ?  Art  has  never  touched 
the  delicacy  of  the  frost-ferns  on  the  win- 
dow, nor  reached  the  splendor  of  the  Jung- 
frau's  silver  dome  ;  but  out  of  these  things 
beauty  may  have  grown  into  stone  with- 
out even  conscious  effort  by  the  architect. 


44  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

They  ask  perpetuation,  these  melting  glo- 
ries, and  his  is  the  art  to  keep  or  convert 
them.  Architecture  appeals  to  more  than 
the  eye  alone.  It  satisfies  the  sense  for 
substance,  greatness,  permanence,  such  as 
snow  hints  in  shining  shadow.  In  that 
the  builder's  art  is  like  nature.  But  for 
this  solidity,  the  stage  palace  of  canvas 
would  serve  our  minds  as  well  as  Durham 
Cathedral  or  the  Chicago  Fair. 

One  advantage  in  our  yard  is  that  it 
gives  access  to  the  shrillest,  coldest  winds 
of  winter.  And  though  it  is  a  mournful 
music,  it  is  likewise  of  a  brave,  romantic 
kind.  True  comfort  of  indoors  is  com- 
plete only  with  a  gale  brattling  at  the  win- 
dows. Draw  the  curtains,  stir  the  fire,  see 
the  family  bestowed  for  the  night;  let  there 
be  no  burning  of  garish  and  vulgar  gas, 
no  dusty,  choking  furnaces,  no  thrice- 
abominable  cracking,  clinking,  smelling, 
and  roasting  of  steam  radiators;  have  at 
your  elbow  a  mug  of  something  cold  and 
bubbling,  or  hot  and  fragrant,  as  your 
taste  directs ;  if  there  are  no  women  at 
home,  or  if  this  is  your  den,  have  a  cigar 


WINTER  45 

if  you  like ;  then  snuggle  into  your  easy- 
chair  and  enjoy  the  concert.  The  boom- 
ing, the  gusts,  the  eldritch  skirling, —  I 
don't  know  what  that  means,  but  it  sounds 
well  and  windy, —  the  whispering  and 
moaning,  the  shaking  of  blinds  and  cas- 
ings, the  singsong  of  the  air's  voice,  are 
inspiring.  It  is  Wagner  night  when  a 
zephyr  achieves  forty  miles  an  hour. 
Those  threatening  sounds  tell  of  far,  cold 
wastes,  of  manful  souls  battling  homeward 
on  the  sea,  of  men  in  lonely  places  doing 
duty  in  the  cold;  and  the  fire  to  which 
we  go  for  pictures  yields  up  a  story  of 
heroism  in  the  mountains,  on  the  ocean, 
on  the  plains,  that  the  wind  accompanies, 
and  that  makes  us  glad  to  be  of  the  precious 
human  race.  Learn  to  love  the  wind.  It 
is  free,  wild,  pure,  and  strong.  It  is  a 
voice  that  never  sings  false.  You  are  never 
small  when  you  listen  to  it. 

And  the  colder  outside  the  cosier  within. 
There  is  experience  enough  of  cold  and 
storm  to  be  had  through  the  windows  to 
satisfy  a  good  many.  Yet  a  man  likes  to 
find  that  the  thermometer  in  his  yard  has 


46  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

gone  higher  in  summer  and  lower  in  winter 
than  the  thermometers  of  his  neighbors. 
It  makes  his  place  adventurous,  and  he 
doubtless  feels  that  he  is  an  object  of  inter- 
est or  sympathy. 

One  blessed  state  of  winter  is  the  quiet 
and  late  morning  hours  it  imposes  on  our 
neighbors'  fowls.  They  seldom  harry  us 
with  visits  after  worms  and  seeds,  but  the 
cocks  proclaim  their  waking  at  seasons 
when  you  do  not  wish  to  be  apprised  of  it. 
It  is  one  of  the  plagues  of  city  life  that 
you  are  thrown  so  close  against  disagreea- 
ble events.  The  authorities  recognize  but 
one  nuisance, — that  which  offends  the  smell, 
— inasmuch  as  it  argues  offense  to  physical 
health.  When  a  man  boils  bones  or  makes 
fertilizers,  his  neighbors  stop  the  work, 
even  going  across  the  borders  of  his  prop- 
erty to  do  it ;  but  he  is  safe  to  offend  the 
sight  in  any  way  he  likes,  and  he  can  take 
strange  liberties  with  our  ears.  The  bark- 
ing dog,  the  singing  ass,  the  screeching 
parrot,  the  shrilling  cat,  the  crowing  cock, 
and  the  boy  learning  to  play  on  the  violin 
it  is  hard  to  surpass. 


WINTER  47 

There  was  one  bird  who  used  to  crow 
for  about  forty  minutes,  beginning  at  one 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  The  wrath  engen- 
dered by  these  solos  kept  me  awake  until 
three,  and  shortly  after  that  hour  he  re- 
sumed for  another  half-hour  or  so.  At 
five  he  began  to  crow  in  serious  earnest 
for  the  day.  And  that  pesky  bird  would 
go  to  bed  while  the  sun  was  an  hour  high, 
in  order  to  keep  his  voice  fresh.  His 
owner  was  one  of  the  Seven  Sleepers,  and 
had  never  heard  him ;  but  by  reason  of  an 
order  from  the  health  board  and  a  police 
visit,  I  convinced  him  that  the  rest  of  us 
did,  and  the  warbler  was  shut  up  after  dark 
forthwith.  He  had  escaped  no  end  of 
stones,  coal,  and  kindling  that  had  been 
hurled  at  his  voice  during  the  night  by 
people  who  went  to  bed  at  midnight  and 
slept  with  their  windows  open. 

Not  all  roosters  are  so  offensive.  I  have 
heard  the  crow  of  one  that  was  a  long,  wail- 
ing note  like  the  howl  of  a  dog.  No  two 
voices  are  alike,  be  it  of  men  or  birds ;  no 
two  faces,  no  two  minds,  no  two  creatures, 
crystals,  flowers,  or  petals.  Nature's  infi- 


48  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

nite  variety  in  unity !  Somewhere,  too, 
in  the  dawn,  a  cock  called  the  hour  in  a 
trumpet-blast,  definitely  musical,  thus : 


and  redeemed  himself  by  that  perform- 
ance; for,  of  all  futilities  in  nature,  the 
harsh  note  of  the  domestic  cock  is  most 
needless.  There  is  an  utter  want  of  mean- 
ing in  his  tune.  Inanimate  things  are 
sometimes  more  agreeable  than  he,  and 
are  less  depraved  than  philosophers  would 
have  us  think.  I  heard  from  our  yard  a 
farm- wagon  grating  and  grinding  along 
a  street-car  track  on  a  frosty  day,  and  the 
sound  was  in  thirds  and  fifths,  like  two 
notes  of  a  bugle. 

How  would  it  do,  now,  to  remove  the 
rooster's  vocal  cords,  if  he  has  any,  and 
by  dint  of  stirpiculture  supplant  the  exist- 
ing species  by  a  crowless  race  ?  Surely, 
greater  wonders  than  this  have  been  ac- 
complished without  man's  help;  and  I  often 
wonder  why  the  cock,  being  a  low-roost- 
ing bird,  reached  easily  by  prowling  foxes 


WINTER  49 

and  the  like,  did  not  long  ago  cease  to  ad- 
vertise his  whereabouts.  Far  back  there 
was  a  reason  for  his  noise,  or  he  would  n't 
have  made  it.  It  was  evolved  from  the 
grunt  or  hiss  of  some  wallowing  lizard, 
his  remotely  great  grandfather.  Now  that 
he  has  taken  to  living  with  us,  let  us  en- 
courage him  to  forget  it.  They  say  that 
evolution  hardly  explains  the  wonderful 
adaptability  and  economy  of  everything 
to  its  function.  Why  not?  The  most  direct 
is  the  most  economic;  and  evolution  never 
goes  roundabout.  As  soon  as  man  got 
fairly  planted  on  his  hind  legs,  his  tail 
shriveled  and  fell  off. 

Perhaps,  though,  the  rooster  does  not 
want  to  evolve,  does  not  want  to  be  peace- 
able, does  not  want  to  lose  his  voice.  He 
may  take  the  same  joy  in  using  it  that 
Reginald  McGonigle  takes  in  using  his,  or 
that  the  thugs  do  in  New  York  when  they 
lift  theirs  in  blasphemy  and  foulness,  proud 
of  their  ability  to  create  attention,  to  shock 
where  they  cannot  win  respect.  Well, 
there  is  a  foundation  Tightness  in  this  evil 
way  of  theirs.  Old  Adam  is  only  the  old 


So  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

animal.  It  does  not  do  to  be  too  civilized. 
Extremes  meet.  The  meeting-place  of 
high  culture  and  abject  poverty  are  the 
asylum  and  the  graveyard.  Society  tells 
us  that  we  are  helpless  without  civilization. 
Yes ;  it  has  made  us  so.  Left  alone  from 
birth,  if  we  did  not  starve  early  we  should 
be  "  more  destitute  than  a  brute,"  espe- 
cially as  we  are  without  any  of  the  wings, 
claws,  teeth,  hair,  feathers,  and  prehensile 
tails  that  put  the  eagle,  the  tiger,  the  mon- 
key above  us  in  the  contest  with  nature. 
Do  we  not,  then,  as  we  get  older  and  real- 
ize our  loss,  want  to  begin  over  again,  and 
recover  some  of  these  brute  advantages  ? 

But,  ah  !  which  one  of  our  acquired  ben- 
efits are  we  willing  to  give  up  for  more 
muscle,  or  for  budding  wings?  The  habit 
of  house-building  ?  The  art  of  cookery  ? 
The  daily  paper  ?  Hm  !  Something  of 
our  talk  ?  Some  of  that  vexing  and  va- 
riant fluid  we  call  mind  ?  Or  the  gift 
of  imagination  ?  Not  the  last,  I  think. 
That  is  the  utmost  of  our  evolution.  It  is 
the  agency  that  lets  us  be  other,  greater, 
happier  than  we  are.  Life  in  the  coun- 


WINTER  51 

try  might  be  as  base  as  life  in  town  if  it 
were  not  for  imagination.  How  much  we 
owe  to  it,  for  how  little  we  have  in  life, 
and  death,  that  is  tangible !  A  little  while 
ago  I  heard  a  whistle  —  on  a  tug-boat  in 
the  river,  most  likely,  for  I  hear  it  once 
a  week  at  least;  and  whenever  it  sounds 
across  the  three  miles  of  roofs,  I  drop  my 
pen,  spade,  book,  or  what  not,  and  am  far 
away  for  some  happy  minutes.  Sounds 
have,  for  me,  the  suggestive  and  reminis- 
cent force  that  many  find  in  odors;  so, 
this  whistle  being  in  my  memory  the  same 
I  heard  on  the  night  boat  that  took  me  on 
my  first  visit  to  the  Catskills,  I  have  the 
thrill  of  that  trip  all  over  again.  It  was 
before  the  time  of  mountain  railroads,  big 
hotels,  land  speculations,  and  "  No  tres- 
passing "  signs.  It  was  in  October,  and 
the  haunted  hills  were  lonely  and  all  mine. 
The  two  days  I  spent  there  were  spent 
afoot, —  I  walked  and  climbed  sixty  miles, 
—  and  they  were  a  revel  in  color  and  the 
pathetic  fragrance  of  fallen  leaves.  So 
the  tug  whistle  dispels  gloom,  soothes 
overwrought  nerves,  obliterates  meaner 


$2  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

sounds,  and  comes  like  a  call  blown  by 
fays  and  fauns  of  the  crimson  hills.  It 
fills  the  world  with  romance,  for  it  is  one 
of  the  few  privileges  of  life  in  the  city  that 
there  is  this  much  to  take  one  out  of  it. 

And  it  is  one  of  the  sorrows  of  that  same 
life  that  there  is  so  little  winter  during  the 
cold  months.  The  snow  that  ought  to  oe 
used  for  sleighing,  and  for  snow-balls  to 
cast  against  the  pot-hats  and  tiles  of  digni- 
fied citizens,  is  trampled  and  fouled  and 
cleared  away.  Maybe  when  we  have  dis- 
missed the  horse  from  our  service  we  shall 
be  allowed  to  slide  over  the  snowy  streets 
in  mechanically  propelled  sledges,  and  to 
take  walks  in  parks  and  across  vacant  lots 
without  sloshing  through  sweepings.  There 
are  few  finer  things  than  to  be  out  of  doors 
in  wind  and  ugly  weather.  It  satisfies  our 
longing  for  fight.  Thoreau  says  we  must 
take  long  walks  in  storm  and  snow  to  keep 
our  spirits  up.  "  Deal  with  brute  nature. 
Be  cold  and  hungry  and  weary."  Hard 
advice  for  us  cits.  I  suppose  my  three- 
mile  wade  to  the  office  on  the  day  of  the 
great  blizzard  would  not  have  counted  with 


WINTER  53 

Thoreau;  yet  I  protest  I  enjoyed  it,  and 
likewise  the  silence  of  the  banked-up  houses 
and  blockaded  streets  for  two  days  after. 
As  to  the  yard,  I  do  go  there  on  winter 
evenings  to  see  if  any  mistaken  vegetable 
has  stirred  in  the  day's  sunshine,  or  if  there 
are  any  new  McGonigle  tracks  in  the  snow. 
If  the  yard  were  ten  miles  long  I  should  not 
try  to  go  to  the  end  of  it,  unless  it  were 
moonlight.  Walking  in  the  small  hours 
over  roads  white  with  snow  is  one  of  the 
most  peaceful  yet  exhilarating  of  experi- 
ences. As  to  cold,  hunger,  and  tire,  those 
states  are  excellent  tonics,  but  poor  com- 
pany. Of  course  it  is  civilization  that  has 
made  us  cowardly,  but  there  are  few  more 
wretched  men  than  those,  too  proud  to 
beg,  who  do  not  know  at  nightfall  where 
they  shall  sleep  or  whether  they  shall  eat. 
The  life  of  a  yard  writes  itself  large  in 
new  snow.  It  is  occasionally  clothes-line 
thieves,  but  mostly  cats,  and  they  wander 
about  in  our  miniature  wilderness,  doubling 
on  their  tracks  like  the  Israelites,  as  if  to 
see  how  much  ground  to  cover  when  there 
is  not  much  to  be  covered.  Sparrows,  too, 


54  NATURE  IN   A  CITY  YARD 

and  pigeons  occasionally  descend  and  leave 
their  starry  footprints  on  the  white.  Why 
is  it  that  the  sparrows,  which  in  other  sea- 
sons fight  and  travel  in  knots  of  three  or 
four,  or  go  about  singly,  appear  so  often  in 
cold  weather  in  flocks  of  a  hundred  ?  Is  it 
that  each  is  afraid  the  others  will  get  some- 
thing to  eat,  and  he  —  the  thief!  —  not  be 
on  hand  to  fight  his  share  away  from  them  ? 
There  is  a  fine  of  one  hundred  dollars  in 
New  York  State  for  feeding  an  English 
sparrow.  It  is  not  needed. 

Perhaps  if  we  had  more  patience  with 
this  rascal  of  a  bird,  he  would  exhibit  some 
respectable  qualities.  Anyway,  he  would 
show  character.  There  is  no  chance  to  show 
that  when  one  is  being  "shooed  "  out  of  a 
doorway.  Every  animal  has  an  individuality 
as  marked  as  that  of  a  human  being.  Take 
cats.  Take  all  of  ours,  if  you  like,  and 
don't  return  them.  But  just  take  the  case 
of  cats.  Their  facial  differences  are  consid- 
erable, when  you  look  for  them,  and  they 
often  wear  a  deceptive  countenance.  Our 
Skimplejinks  has  a  surprised  and  distant 
aspect,  yet  he  gambols  out  to  meet  me  in 


WINTER  55 

the  morning,  like  a  dog,  and  runs  up  my 
trousers  and  coat  to  my  shoulder.  When 
a  boot  is  shied  toward  him  along  the 
floor,  he  shoots  straight  into  the  air,  like  a 
bucking  bronco,  and  as  high.  I  know  two 
kittens  of  the  same  family:  one  a  seraphic- 
looking  youngster  with  a  pretty  face,  soft 
fur,  and  contemptible  disposition ;  the  other 
a  vagrom  brute  with  coarse  gray  hair 
streaked  with  black,  a  vulgar  countenance, 
and  marked  courtesy  and  consideration. 
The  tramp  will  accept  a  bone  thankfully, 
and  in  teasing  for  more  will  pat  you  softly 
to  draw  your  attention,  while  the  seraph 
spits  at  everything  before  eating  it,  and 
once,  when  I  offered  my  ringer  coated  with 
gravy  for  him  to  clean,  he  bit  it  instead. 

It  is  pleasant  to  find  that  most  people 
esteem  animals,  even  when  they  are  hunters 
and  gourmets  and  wearers  of  ornamented 
bonnets,  and  prefer  them  dead.  Thoreau 
says  he  likes  the  brutes  because  they  never 
talk  nonsense,  are  never  foolish,  vain,  pom- 
pous, or  stupid.  How  about  a  parrot,  an 
ostrich,  a  peacock,  a  horse,  a  hen  ?  They 
make  capital  companions,  when  they  con- 


56  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

descend  to  associate  with  us,  and  are  al- 
ways interesting,  for  they  never  lay  bare 
their  thoughts  to  us.  They  are  full  of  sur- 
prises. Why  does  the  horse  bolt  furiously 
up  the  street  and  kill  several  of  us  if,  for 
the  twentieth  time  in  a  week,  he  sees  a 
harmless  piece  of  paper  blown  about  the 
pave  ?  And  why  does  Arthur,  our  dog, 
wail  and  howl  when  I  play  the  "  Moon- 
light Sonata,"  though  I  play  everything 
else  as  badly,  or  worse  ?  Yet  he  comes  to 
lie  on  my  feet  when  I  open  the  piano. 
And  cats  are  as  freakish  as  the  weather. 
And  there  's  our  canary.  He  will  not 
bathe  unless  his  tub  is  put  into  his  cage 
while  it  is  hanging.  Set  it  on  the  table, 
and  he  refuses  to  wet  his  feet. 

The  first  snow  is  always  an  event  even 
in  town.  Winter  has  really  come,  and  the 
almanac  is  right.  Even  those  who  do  not 
regard  the  seasons  or  look  at  the  sky  have 
this  fact  forced  on  them:  that  something 
is  under  foot  that  was  not  there  yesterday. 
A  company  of  gentlemen,  passing  as  the 
flakes  began  to  fall,  showed  that  they  were 
not  wholly  out  of  touch  with  nature. 


WINTER  57 

Said  one,  "  I  '11  be if  it  ain't 

snowing ! " 

Another  replied,  "  What  the do  I 

care  if  it  is  snowing  ?  "  Then,  in  a  tone  of 

awakening  interest,  "Well,  by  ,  I  '11 

be if  it  ain't  snowing !  " 

And  the  gentlemen  continued  their  stroll. 

Occasionally  the  plants  show  a  surprising 
indifference  to  frost.  A  rosebud  that  ap- 
peared about  the  first  of  October  was  still 
awaiting  encouragement  from  the  sun  in 
the  middle  of  November.  On  Thanksgiv- 
ing day  I  examined  it  again,  but  it  had 
not  budged.  As  a  mild  winter  followed, 
I  found  no  change  in  it.  It  remained  a 
swollen,  but  never-bursting  bullet  of  red. 
Finally  I  cut  it  and  put  it  into  a  vase  of 
water  in  the  house,  thinking  that  it  might 
open  in  the  warmth;  but  it  slowly  withered 
without  opening  a  leaf  or  abating  a  jot  of 
its  toughness.  After  no  less  than  six  frosts 
the  yarrow  was  as  green  as  in  August. 

And  we  often  go  out  to  look  at  these 
survivals,  that  we  may  keep  our  minds 
green  until  the  time  of  birds  and  buds 
comes  around  once  more. 


V 

SPRING 

r\  AHE  last  snow  has  fallen.  The  country- 
JL  man  is  now  embogged,  and  is  losing 
temper  and  dollars  because  of  the  delays, 
difficulties,  and  damages  he  has  imposed  on 
himself  by  his  cheap  and  miserable  roads, 
and  the  city  man  is  returning  thanks  that 
his  yet  more  miserable  street  has  ceased  to 
be  a  place  of  navigation,  and  may  now  be 
forded,  with  rubbers.  The  first  warm  days 
take  one  out  of  doors :  albeit  in  town  they 
bring  a  forecast  of  the  frightful  August 
weeks  to  come,  when  men  and  horses  fall 
at  their  work  and  have  to  be  put  on  ice, — 
that  is,  the  men  do, —  and  babies  die  by 
hundreds  in  the  tenements;  die  wretchedly 
within  half  a  dozen  miles  of  health  and 
life ;  die  because  their  parents  are  hopeless 

victims  of  the  aggregation  habit. 

58 


SPRING  59 

Now,  we  pull  down  the  books  and  mag- 
azines on  gardening;  likewise  the  seeds 
which  are  to  grow  into  vines  that  will  climb 
all  over  the  ward  and  star  themselves  with 
flowers  as  big  as  soup-plates,  as  brilliant 
as  Solomon  and  society  at  the  opera,  but 
less  sounding  than  either.  We  go  out  and 
poke  the  crooked  spade  into  the  ground, 
and  fetch  up  a  rich  assortment  of  old  boots, 
rubbers,  bustles,  oyster-cans,  spikes,  cin- 
ders, cobblestones,  and  other  reminders 
that  this  is  "  improved  property" — save  the 
mark  !  This  is  the  beginning  of  joy.  The 
birds  are  coming  back  —  to  other  people ; 
the  brooks  are  tinkling — just  listen  to  our 
gutter;  and  the  flowers  will  be  here  by 
and  by ;  but  ah  !  will  they  be  according  to 
those  vivid  colored  catalogues  of  the  seeds- 
men ?  Verily,  I  have  a  fear ;  for  many 
benefits  turn  to  blights.  There  is  the 
manure  that  we  paid  the  stable-keeper  a 
dollar  a  load  for,  last  fall,  and  look  at  what 
we  are  getting  from  it :  insects,  eggs,  co- 
coons, wireworms,  centipedes,  all  brought 
in  with  that  enrichment.  Sometimes  it 
does  n't  seem  worth  while  to  reform,  be- 


60  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

cause  the  new  evils  that  come  with  refor- 
mation appear  so  much  worse  than  the  old 
ones. 

It  all  has  to  be  looked  up  again,  every 
spring :  the  way  to  put  bulbs  and  seeds  in, 
where,  how  deep,  how  many,  in  what  soil ; 
and  even  after  the  ground  is  prepared  the 
dibble  is  sure  to  strike  subterranean  pans 
and  flatirons,  and  the  spade  has  to  be  re- 
sumed. Then,  when  it  is  late  and  mild 
enough  to  sow,  the  weeds  are  up  in  a  lot 
of  new  places,  and  are  stealthily  encroach- 
ing on  the  space  reserved  for  plants  that 
would  please  us  better.  And  if  we  are 
wise  we  do  our  weeding  betimes.  Com- 
pleteness is  rare  in  this  industry.  I  have 
seen  only  one  exhibition  of  it,  and  that 
was  in  the  close  of  one  of  the  English  ca- 
thedrals, where  two  women  were  seated  on 
the  earth,  patiently  digging  out  of  it,  with 
steel  dining-forks,  every  growing  thing 
that  was  n't  grass.  The  average  man  will 
admire  that  conduct  —  and  refrain. 

In  moderation,  the  exercise  of  weeding 
encourages  to  good  nature.  It  satisfies  the 
human  instinct  of  destruction,  and,  unlike 


SPRING  61 

other  forms  of  violence,  it  tends  to  good 
results  —  in  us.  If  only  we  could  weed 
humanity  of  its  parasites,  its  vicious,  its 
criminal  elements  as  quickly  and  ruthlessly 
as  we  weed  our  gardens !  We  should 
have  no  army  of  50,000  tramps  to  beg, 
bully,  and  steal  a  living  out  of  us,  no  bur- 
glars, no  drunken,  corner-loafing,  wife- 
beating,  non-washing,  swearing,  insolent 
creatures.  When  we  are  better  ourselves, 
we  shall  be  less  soft  toward  the  irreclaim- 
able, I  fancy.  If  any  escape  the  right 
parental  and  other  formative  influences, 
we  shall  exile  them  to  barren  lands,  where 
they  must  hustle  healthfully  to  live.  The 
weeding  of  the  human  race  cannot  begin 
too  soon,  and  the  outlook  for  the  rest  of  us 
will  be  brighter  when  criminals,  by  surgery 
if  by  no  other  means,  can  be  prevented 
from  longer  begetting  their  kind,  for  it  is  a 
bad  kind. 

Like  all  reforms,  weeding  is  easiest  when 
earliest.  You  can  thrust  your  fingers  into 
the  loose  soil,  and  trace  a  root  of  witch- 
grass  six  inches  under  the  surface  and  a 
foot  in  length,  all  spiked  with  yellow  blades 


62  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

that  would  have  been  up  in  another  day 
or  two  ;  and  as  to  the  thousand  other  things, 
—  plantain,  thistles,  and  the  like, —  you 
have  only  to  whistle  to  them,  and  out  they 
come.  But  in  August  —  well,  that  's  dif- 
ferent. And  weeds  are  so  outrageously 
healthy.  Or,  do  they  merely  seem  so  ? 
The  energy  of  vice  and  destructiveness 
always  seems  greater  than  that  of  virtue, 
probably  because  it  is  forced  so  disagree- 
ably on  our  notice.  Ugly  dogs,  ugly  men, 
armies,  beasts  of  prey,  birds,  fishes  —  what 
waste  of  ferocity  and  excess  of  effort  in 
working  their  purpose !  Yet  I  don't  be- 
lieve this  tale  that  all  is  fear  and  suffering 
in  the  lesser  world.  Insects,  at  all  events, 
do  not  suffer  before  they  are  eaten.  Harsh- 
ness is  but  a  little  part  of  nature,  and  ben- 
efits go  with  it.  Though  the  storm,  the 
flood,  the  thunderbolt,  work  harm,  look  on 
the  fields,  and  see  what  kindness  is  in  the 
sun  and  air  and  rain. 

If  we  would  let  the  weeds  alone,  or  if 
we  would  be  good  to  them  and  water  them 
and  cut  away  the  corn  and  potatoes  and 
geraniums  when  they  encroached,  who 


SPRING  63 

knows  what  food  for  sight  and  stomach 
they  might  pay  us  with  ?  For  every  plant 
was  a  weed  once.  Yet  I  more  incline  to 
fancy  that  the  fed  weed  would  sicken  in 
disgust  and  shame  at  being  thus  taken  for 
something  desirable,  and  would  peak  and 
pine  and  shrink  into  the  earth.  The  skunk- 
cabbage  I  bought  of  a  sidewalk  fakir  sim- 
ply refused  to  stay  alive  in  the  yard.  He 
had  hurt  its  feelings,  maybe,  by  calling  it 
an  Egyptian  water-lily.  But  with  planting 
to  do,  we  cannot  stop  to  guess  what  the 
burdock  and  the  ragweed  might  come  to. 
We  slash  them  down,  and  know  that  their 
brothers  and  sisters  will  be  up  next  week. 
Still,  this  weeding  takes  us  into  the  open, 
and  makes  the  flowers  so  much  the  more 
precious  in  that  they  have  been  fought  for. 
No  doubt  it  is  better  that  we  should  have 
nothing  as  we  want  it.  That  enables  us  to 
enjoy  the  wakeful  emotion  of  surprise.  It 
likewise  incites  us  to  effort,  and  the  effort- 
less man  is  stagnant,  useless,  decadent. 

Did  a  man  ever  plant  a  thing  —  a  seed 
or  an  idea  —  that  he  did  not  watch  to  see 
it  come  up  ?  He  must  be  a  freak,  or  very 


64  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

busy,  if  he  did  n't.  He  has  made  himself 
responsible  for  it ;  he  has  jibed  his  conduct 
to  that  of  nature  ;  he  is  a  creator,  in  a  way, 
and  it  hurts  his  pride  a  little  if  he  can't 
raise  beans.  And  it  is  a  serene  and  pretty 
satisfaction  to  see  things  come  out  of  the 
earth.  It  is  as  big  a  mystery  as  it  was 
when  man  did  no  planting  and  did  no 
thinking  with  his  teacupful  of  brains,  save 
of  the  wherewithal  to  be  fed.  As  they  rise 
out  of  the  soil,  these  shoots  are  so  alike  for 
some  days  that  we,  with  our  ill-trained 
eyes,  puzzle  over  their  identity.  What  we 
decide  to  be  a  daisy  is  a  plantain,  and  our 
lily  in  the  other  bed  is  an  orchid.  But 
they  all  stick  loyally  to  their  type,  and  the 
genista  never  turns  out  to  be  an  apple-tree. 
Once  we  coddled  a  weed  for  a  month,  in 
the  supposition  that  it  was  argeratum.  It 
grew  from  the  spot  where  we  had  one  of 
these  plants ;  so  far  as  its  leaves  were  con- 
cerned, it  bej.t  the  argeratum,  too,  and  did 
not  have  a  horde  of  green,  repellent  grubs 
upon  it,  either. 

Such   a   fresh    rainbow-green    as   these 
new  things  wear !     The  eye  never  tires  of 


SPRING  65 

it.  Or,  if  it  wants  awakening,  let  it  look 
at  the  other  colors  for  a  minute,  and  it  en- 
joys them  ;  still  it  returns  to  the  green 
with  gladness.  Be  sorry  for  the  man  who 
takes  no  pleasure  in  color.  Be  twice  as 
sorry  for  the  woman.  Pray  for  them  both. 
There  are  men,  usually  artists,  who  live 
by  color  as  much  as  by  bread.  One  such, 
whom  I  know,  clung  to  his  brass  and  china 
through  a  long  time  of  almost  starvation, 
and  would  not  sell  one  of  his  studio  trea- 
sures. He  was  a  crank.  Admirable  insti- 
tution, the  crank  —  the  only  one  of  us  who 
wears  any  picturesqueness  in  these  days. 
It  would  be  a  happier  world  if  everybody 
in  it  were  a  crank.  A  crank  is  a  man  who 
is  more  interested  in  something  than  his 
neighbors  are.  He  thinks  he  knows  more 
about  it,  and  they  hate  him  for  that,  and 
suspect  him  of  designs.  But  if  everybody 
were  a  crank,  there  would  be  no  such  sour- 
ness of  thought  toward  him,  because  no- 
body would  take  a  contract  to  hate  the 
whole  human  race.  Besides,  there  are  not 
many  bad  cranks.  I  used  to  know  a  fel- 
low who  had  a  passionate  interest  in  neck- 

5 


66  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

ties.  If  he  could  stand  in  front  of  you 
and  study  yours  while  you  told  him  where 
you  got  it,  and  when,  and  why,  and  what 
you  paid  for  it,  it  was  all  he  asked.  He 
grew  in  influence  as  he  got  older  and  had 
a  political  job.  He  is  distinguished  by  the 
gorgeousness  of  his  scarfs.  None  of  us  is 
self-centered :  we  are  results  of  the  past ; 
and  I  have  vainly  tried  to  imagine  what 
brought  him  about. 

Scarfs  suggest  color,  again,  and  that 
suggests  art,  and  both  recall  me  to  the 
yard,  where  I  have  been  setting  out  petu- 
nias, which  are  among  the  safest,  steadiest, 
and  most  remunerative  of  all  bloomers. 
But  I  wanted  to  say  that  what  we  call  the 
artistic  sense  is  often  but  the  feeling  for 
nature  altered  by  generations  of  a  society 
that  seeks  its  self-protection  at  the  ex- 
pense of  normal  impulse.  Once  meshed 
in  the  house-staying  habit,  the  victim,  who 
has  already  lost  the  fineness  of  his  sense  of 
smell,  the  delicacy  of  his  touch,  and  the 
savage's  quickness  of  sight,  resolves  to  keep 
his  palate  with  high-seasoned  appliances, 
and  to  distinguish  colors,  anyhow,  with  his 


SPRING  67 

eyes.  The  cook  is  an  artificer;  but  we 
forgive  and  even  encourage  him  in  his  in- 
ventions. But  what  is  the  meaning  of  our 
rugs,  our  pottery,  our  pictures,  our  jewels, 
our  morocco  bindings,  our  implements  of 
brass  and  silver,  our  patterned  upholstery, 
our  wall-papers,  if  not  to  afford  color- 
equivalents  of  leaf,  flower,  water,  rock,  dis- 
tance, and  sunset  ?  So  we  employ  artists 
at  many  cunning  trades,  solely  to  keep  our 
heads  above  the  social  swim  by  color-call- 
ings to  our  souls.  A  set  of  Chinese  single- 
color  porcelains  makes,  as  near  as  may  be, 
an  epitome  of  the  chromatics  of  the  outer 
world.  While  they  are  on  our  shelves  our 
eyes  are  not  forlorn. 

Winter  is  not  an  offense  to  me,  even  in 
town.  They  say  it  is  kind  of  me  not  to 
object  to  it.  There  is  a  keen  delight  in 
fighting  a  north  wind,  in  wading  through 
snow,  in  feeling  the  tingle  of  blood  that 
such  a  wrestle  sends  through  one.  And 
the  beauty  of  snow,  the  silver  of  it,  the 
shine  of  it,  the  stillness  of  it,  the  health  of  it, 
freezing  and  smothering  the  evil  fraternity 
of  microbes  —  these  are  not  to  be  gain- 


68  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

said.  But  with  the  peep  of  spring  we  be- 
gin to  be  willing  to  see  green.  There  is  a 
lot  of  life  in  winter,  especially  in  ourselves; 
but  life  without  vegetation  is  not  complete. 
Green  is  the  assurance  of  life.  So  we  watch 
for  the  coming  of  the  grasses,  of  the  clover, 
hop-clover,  wild  clover,  chickweed,  pig- 
weed, purslane,  plantain-rod,  English 
plantain,  dandelion,  smartweed,  shepherd's- 
purse,  oxalis,  mallow,  daisy,  sorrel,  cam- 
omile, wild  parsnip,  ragweed,  butter-and- 
eggs,  thistle,  aster,  yellow-dock, —  all  of 
which  are  indigenous  to  our  yard, — while 
we  keep  an  eye  on  the  moss,  algae,  and 
fungi,  and  rejoice  to  see  their  increase. 
The  foregoing  list  is  not  complete:  it  is 
merely  recalled.  When  I  looked  first  at 
the  yard  I  saw  nothing  but  grass.  The 
eye  sees  what  it  wants  or  expects,  or  is 
used  to  see.  After  a  time  I  noticed  clover. 
I  am  not  sure  that  I  discovered  the  abun- 
dance of  chickweed  until  the  canary-bird 
needed  some.  Now  I  find  that  every 
yard  is  a  botanical  garden  of  unguessed 
variety  and  extent.  Even  some  yards  in 
that  Sahara  they  call  New  York  —  yards 


SPRING  69 

with  a  dozen  spears  of  vegetation  —  have 
at  least  two  or  three  forms  of  plant  life. 

There  is  one  lack  in  city  farming,  how- 
ever, and  that  is  birds.  The  chatter- 
ing, quarreling  English  sparrow,  who  has 
driven  American  birds  away,  infests  us,  of 
course  ;  but  the  robins,  the  bluebirds,  yel- 
low-birds, and  orioles,  that  I  used  to  see  in 
town  in  my  youth  —  they  are  gone  :  hidden 
in  the  country,  some ;  sacrificed  for  wo- 
men's hats,  others.  Once  I  did  hear  a  robin 
in  a  tree  a  few  rods  away,  and  an  unknown 
bird  was  singing  in  our  hearing  at  an- 
other time.  There  is  a  plenty  of  songsters 
in  the  park,  and  I  often  run  out  there  on 
my  wheel  to  hear  them.  The  park  is  only 
a  mile  away,  yet  almost  never  does  one 
of  these  birds  alight  in  our  preserve. 

The  night-hawk  is  our  only  visitor  who 
is  truly  wild,  and  he  has  never  come  to 
earth  in  my  sight.  He  appears  in  May, 
and  his  harsh  squawking  is  heard  often  on 
consecutive  evenings  until  fall.  As  he  ar- 
rives in  the  twilight  it  is  hard  to  get  a  peep 
at  him;  but  one  afternoon  he  began  to  cry 
before  sunset,  and  it  was  easy  to  place  him 


70  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

then.  His  flight  is  short  and  jerky  as 
compared  with  that  of  the  great  hawk. 
From  an  elevation  of  perhaps  three  hun- 
dred feet  he  twice  swooped  rapidly  to 
within  a  hundred  feet  of  ground.  His 
squawk  must  have  frightened  his  prey,  if 
he  saw  any.  On  another  evening  he  came 
flying  from  the  southwest,  hurriedly  pass- 
ing not  more  than  sixty  or  eighty  feet 
overhead.  Three  of  these  hawks  came 
over  in  company  at  another  time,  and 
their  shrilling  was  far  more  agreeable  to 
me  than  the  yell  of  "  Clams !  Soft-shell 
clams ! "  on  the  next  street.  But  many 
will  not  believe  it.  His  harsh  and  threat- 
ening note  is  a  gratefully  wild  one  in  the 
dry,  warm  town.  Though  it  sounds  but  a 
few  rods  up  in  the  air,  you  see  nothing 
with  straining  of  your  eyes;  so  there  is 
something  elfish  and  uncanny  as  well  as 
exhilarating  in  this  shriek  from  a  viewless 
source. 

If  only  a  crow  would  come  around  once 
in  a  while  and  sing  for  us,  the  bricks  and 
noise  would  be  forgotten,  though  not  for- 
given, and  the  country  would  be  near. 


SPRING  71 

Never  having  crops  to  lose, — for  that  mat- 
ter, knowing  that  he  eats  more  insects  than 
corn, — the  caw  of  the  crow  is  music  to  me. 
It  is  strong,  calm,  and  confident — a  voice 
of  nature.  So,  I  take  it,  is  the  voice  of 
Reginald  McGonigle,  who  may  be  regarded 
as  the  crow  of  this  neighborhood,  since  he 
despoils  yards  at  his  pleasure. 

Did  I  omit  the  pigeons  ?  Still,  they  are 
not  wild.  Look  at  a  flight  of  them :  hu- 
man-like creatures,  following  each  other 
without  question  as  to  the  straight,  sensi- 
ble, profitable  way.  On  nearly  every  morn- 
ing they  are  to  be  seen  rising  from  a  stable 
roof  on  another  street :  more  than  a  score 
of  them.  They  fly  over  the  roofs  at  a 
height  of  sixty  to  a  hundred  feet,  circling 
in  a  ring  fifty  yards  in  diameter.  After 
going  perhaps  twenty  times  from  right  to 
left,  a  few  will  spring  higher  into  the  air,  the 
rest  following,  as  in  "  snap  the  whip,"  and 
reverse  the  motion,  so  that  the  flight  goes 
from  left  to  right.  Do  they  get  dizzy  like 
green  waltzers  or  romping  children  ?  Af- 
ter wheeling  for  a  time  in  the  new  direction 
they  drop  to  the  roofs,  as  by  general  con- 


72  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

sent,  occasionally  resuming  the  exercise 
later.  What  are  they  doing?  They  do 
not  seem  to  be  chasing  any  luckier  one 
of  their  number  with  a  crust  in  his  beak, 
though  at  times  there  is  a  moment  of  live- 
lier rush,  as  if  hoping  to  overtake  some- 
thing. It  seems  rather  a  sport.  They  play 
circus,  or  follow-my-leader.  They  are  lit- 
erally skylarking,  except  for  the  song. 

When  spring  comes  in  town  the  arrival  is 
quick,  but  especially  insidious.  You  quar- 
rel with  your  overcoat,  and  your  graceless 
pot-hat  makes  your  brow  sweat.  Then 
you  notice  that  it  is  warm,  and  you  look 
to  the  earth  to  prove  it.  Yes,  the  grass  is 
an  inch  out  of  the  ground,  yet  only  the 
day  before  yesterday  you  noticed  the  yard 
narrowly,  and  there  was  no  new  green,  only 
the  dusty  green  of  the  rhododendron  leaves 
and  the  buds  it  has  been  cherishing  since 
fall ;  the  gray  green  of  the  honeysuckle ; 
the  streaks  of  old  green  in  the  grass,  where 
it  was  cheated  by  a  midwinter  spell  of 
October  weather  into  coming  out,  then 
brutally  nipped ;  and  the  dull  stalks  of  the 
roses  with  their  leaf-buds  in  the  axils  of 


SPRING  73 

old  stems  that  fell  off  at  a  touch  in  De- 
cember. The  iris,  though  its  older  leaves 
are  drooped  and  faded,  keeps  its  inner  and 
shorter  stalks  firm  and  summery-looking 
until  the  very  last  of  the  snowy  season. 

In  our  coast  towns  the  awakening  of  the 
year  is  heralded  by  a  chorus  of  sneezes 
and  coughs ;  for  the  air  is  charged  with 
moisture,  making  it  seem  warmer  than  it 
is,  and  men  steal  into  chambers  to  shed 
their  flannels  and  exchange  them  for  gauze, 
avoiding  publicity  and  confession  of  this 
swap  to  escape  a  scolding.  Then  they  go 
out,  and  the  mercury  drops  twenty  degrees 
unannounced,  and  they  go  back  home  and 
have  things  the  matter  with  their  lungs  and 
other  interior  fittings.  At  least  they  do 
if  they  live  up  to  the  expectations  of  those 
elderly  female  relatives  who  gather  at  the 
bedside  and  say,  "  I  told  you  so."  Tak- 
ing no  joy  in  hot  and  scratchy  flannel, 
some  of  them,  among  whom  I  humbly 
number  myself,  wear  none  of  it,  and  have 
only  the  usual  number  of  colds.  When 
it  is  chilly  one  can  put  on  an  overcoat. 
Doubtless  if  we  would  breathe  deeply  and 


74  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

use  our  lungs  as  we  should,  a  change 
in  temperature  or  atmospheric  condition 
would  not  bother  us.  A  few  people  think 
it  a  solemn  duty  to  acquire  fevers,  boils, 
bad  blood,  and  other  incorrect  habits  in 
the  spring;  and  this  class  of  the  self-de- 
luded afflict  themselves  with  bitter  herbs 
and  nauseous  stews,  which  are  known  as 
"spring  medicine."  As  if  there  could  be 
a  spring  medicine  !  The  advertising  quack 
vends  gallons  of  nostrums  on  the  strength 
of  an  inherited  faith.  There  are  no  spring 
disorders,  any  more  than  there  are  autumn 
disorders,  or  a  "  line  storm,"  or  a  devil,  or 
a  will-o'-the-wisp. 

It  is  a  subtle  and  wondrous  change  that 
the  trees  make  in  the  few  first  days  of 
leafage.  Red  is  a  common  color  for  the 
newest  foliage,  and  in  certain  of  the  oaks 
it  is  almost  as  strong  a  red  as  you  find  in 
October.  Does  this  serve  any  protective 
purpose  against  insects  or  browsing  ani- 
mals? Hardly.  It  is  that  the  sunlight  has 
not  had  time  to  kindle  the  chlorophyl. 

Rains  are  to  be  looked  for  now;  and 
after  a  long,  hard  one  I  notice  that  the 


SPRING  75 

shade-maples  in  the  street  are  drooping,  as 
if  water-soaked  or  chilled.  Does  the  lack 
of  light  sadden  them  ?  The  effect  is  some- 
what lasting,  for  they  do  not  brighten 
promptly  when  the  sun  returns.  But  how 
the  fall  of  water  inspirits  the  algae  !  Look 
for  them  on  the  north  side  of  tree-trunks 
after  rain.  Small  boys  who  want  to  trail 
grizzlies  and  red  men  through  the  woods 
may  begin  their  education  in  forestry  in 
our  yards  and  streets. 

Earth  is  deceptive  —  at  least  the  mixed 
kind  on  our  block  is  so.  It  looks  as  if  it 
would  be  an  easy  thing  to  spade  up  the 
whole  yard  in  a  day  ;  but  as  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  run  a  blade  full  depth  in  less  than 
three  tries,  the  job  becomes  appalling  be- 
fore even  the  borders  are  dug  over.  We 
gather  up  the  cobbles  and  coal-hods  that 
are  exhumed  in  this  industry,  and  after 
dark  cast  them  into  a  hollow  across  the 
way,  where  they  and  the  bed- springs  are 
sure  to  become  springs  of  profanity  in  the 
man  who  is  going  to  build  there.  (And 
serve  him  right  for  shutting  out  our  view  !) 
Once  the  digging  promised  to  be  interest- 


76  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

ing,  for  it  looked  as  if  we  had  discovered 
moles ;  but  on  penetrating  their  supposed 
tunnel,  it  was  found  to  be  caused  by  the 
soil  working  out  under  the  fence  into  the 
carpenter's  yard,  which  is  a  foot  or  so  lower 
than  ours.  But  there  is  some  instinct  in 
us,  dating  back  to  more-times-great-grand- 
fathers than  we  would  try  to  enumerate, 
that  bids  us  dig,  and  there  is  a  natural 
conscience  that  approves  when  we  have 
put  in  and  covered  the  seeds.  The  world 
is  going  to  be  richer  for  our  day's  work, 
and  when  we  come  in  with  lame  back  and 
trembling  hands,  marveling  that  physical 
labor  should  be  so  hard  to  the  unaccus- 
tomed, we  feel  a  glow  of  pride,  and  an  as- 
surance that  we  have  earned  sleep  and  a 
dinner.  Better,  we  have  earned  health. 
We  have  no  pessimism  where  green  things 
are  and  people  dig  for  their  dinners.  Pes- 
simism is  worse  than  tragedy:  it  is  a 
tragedy  of  the  soul ;  the  attribute  of  a 
tired-out  race.  When  we  keep  in  touch 
with  nature  we  share  her  splendid  life. 

On  the  day  in  early  March  when,  for  the 
first  time  in  the  year,  I  saunter  forth  with- 
out an  overcoat,  with  the  youngsters  in 


SPRING  77 

tow,  likewise  without  top-coats,  to  their 
relief  and  glee,  we  find  the  Scleranthus 
annuus  brightening.  What  a  name  to  roll 
under  the  tongue,  and  what  nonsense  to 
give  it  to  such  a  little,  harmless  plant ! 
Also  we  find  springing  grass  in  warm  cor- 
ners, a  few  feet  from  old  snowdrifts  partly 
glaciated  to  a  depth  of  three  or  four  feet. 
But  the  find  of  the  day  is  a  caterpillar 
moving  stiffly  over  an  old  newspaper. 
Where  was  he  quartered  all  winter  ?  And 
only  last  night  there  was  a  tight  freeze. 
Clarence  and  Harold  carry  this  creature  in- 
to the  house  and  put  him  under  a  tumbler, 
as  partial  offset  for  the  loss  of  the  turtle. 
The  second  turtle  they  brought  from  New 
Jersey  would  come  into  the  house  in  the 
fall  whenever  a  door  was  opened,  instead 
of  burying  himself  as  he  would  have  done 
if  he  had  never  learned  that  houses  were 
warm.  We  wrapped  him  in  carpets,  put 
him  into  a  box,  and  he  went  to  sleep ;  but 
during  some  zero  weather  his  slumber 
merged  into  the  long  one.  His  predecessor 
was  kept  in  a  warm  cellar,  and  did  not 
hibernate.  He  did  worse  —  he  died. 
On  the  night  of  this  same  March  day 


78  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

we  are  able  to  see  the  eclipse  of  the  moon 
from  our  yard  as  well  as  if  we  had  been  in 
Walden. 

With  the  graying  and  thinning  of  our 
hair  we  have  less  warmth  under  it,  they 
say,  and  begin  to  live  in  the  past  —  in  that 
period  when  we  amounted  to  something, 
or  thought  we  did.  And  in  this  season  of 
the  year  one  childish  episode  returns  to 
me :  May  Day.  The  good  old  custom,  set 
by  the  Druids,  of  rambling  off  to  field  or 
grove  on  the  first  of  May,  and  making  a 
show  of  gathering  flowers  that  usually  were 
not  there,  was  as  general  in  Boston  in  my 
early  years  as  that  of  shooting  gunpowder 
and  each  other  on  the  Fourth  of  July  among 
the  boys  of  all  our  towns  to-day.  School 
was  dismissed,  and  the  children  put  on 
wreaths  of  flowers,  and  traveled  about  in 
groups,  playing  games  or  picnicking  with 
their  teachers  or  other  elders  among  the 
Cambridge  elms,  the  Middlesex  fells,  and 
the  Newton  hills.  As  there  were  few  flor- 
ists in  those  days  and  little  pocket-money 
among  the  juvenile  Puritans,  their  wreaths 
were  made  of  paper ;  and  sheets  of  colored 


SPRING  79 

tissue,  from  which  these  garnitures  were 
cut,  were  offered  in  the  shops  at  a  cent 
apiece,  as  freely  as  toys  at  Christmas. 
These  sheets  the  maternal  hand  wrought 
into  marvelous  roses,  camelias,  and  other 
blossoms  that  had  no  likeness  to  anything 
on  earth;  but  there  was  color,  and  the 
effect  was  innocent  and  pretty.  Now  and 
then  one  heard  of  dances  about  the  May- 
pole, and  the  garlands  were  of  paper,  too. 
The  only  garlands  I  ever  saw  were  made 
of  that.  Yet,  from  the  way  the  poets  used 
to  talk  about  them,  you  might  suppose 
that  flowers  grew  that  way  on  every  bush. 
The  sweet  old  day  is  gone.  Perhaps  Dec- 
oration Day  takes  the  place  of  it.  It  was 
not  very  seasonable,  anyway ;  and  a  boy 
with  a  wreath  of  flowers,  upturned  collar, 
and  red  nose  did  not  look  entirely  spring- 
like. If  the  true  allegory  of  New  Eng- 
land's May  is  ever  painted,  she  will  be 
represented  in  a  sealskin  sack  and  a  pair 
of  overshoes,  with  hothouse  roses  in  her 
hand. 


VI 

SUMMER 

QUMMER  is  the  time  when  the  yard 
O  looks  best  and  feels  worst  —  meaning 
that  the  human  creatures  who  maintain  it 
are  least  at  ease ;  for  we  have  about  four 
months  in  the  year  when  the  temperature 
is  infernal.  Those  who  can,  and  are  wise, 
fly  to  the  hills.  Those  who  are  poor  and 
can't,  or  won't,  stay  among  the  baking 
bricks  and  blistering  asphalt,  and  toil  and 
drink  and  grumble  and  die.  And  it  is  not 
every  one  who  can  show  a  yard  with  fifty 
varieties  of  plant  in  bloom  at  once  to  miti- 
gate the  temperature.  For,  really,  it  seems 
a  shade  less  hot  when  you  can  smell  roses 
through  the  windows,  and  when  the  lus- 
ciousness  of  honeysuckle  pervades  the 
steaming,  stagnant  air.  In  the  morning, 

when  people  are  gasping  at  the  humidity, 
80 


SUMMER  81 

and  the  heat  is  rippling  up  from  the  flag- 
stones and  out  from  the  house-fronts,  we 
have  only  to  go  to  the  back  windows  and 
look  down  into  the  lush  greenery  to  feel  as 
if  there  were  less  perspiration.  In  New 
York  a  yard,  save  just  enough  of  one  for 
clothes  to  dry  and  cats  to  sing  in,  is  an  ex- 
ception. I  would  rather  rent  this  two- 
story  affair  with  a  few  feet  of  nature  added, 
than  live  in  Fifth  Avenue  and  have  no 
grass  to  put  my  feet  on. 

And  there  goes  a  statement  that  will  be 
doubted,  because  there  are  so  many  who 
believe  that  everybody  wants  to  be  rich. 
Comfortable,  free  from  anxiety,  yes.  Rich, 
no.  The  joys  of  wealth  have  been  extolled 
openly  in  converse,  covertly  in  writing. 
Few  have  published  the  joys  of  poverty  — 
not  the  pretty  sentiment  of  song  and  pic- 
ture, the  roses  and  love  and  bread  and 
cheese  and  lowly  cottage  and  all  that,  but 
the  real  enjoyment  of  it.  Think  of  its  irre- 
sponsibility, of  its  freedom  from  duns,  for 
nobody  will  trust  you ;  of  the  security 
from  invitation  to  drunken  dinners,  insipid 
calls,  pretentious  receptions,  solemn  func- 


82  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

tions,  and  fussy  teas;  of  the  liberty  to  do 
nearly  as  you  like,  and  go  where  you  please, 
and  enlarge  upon  Mrs.  Grundy  as  roundly 
in  words  as  you  are  sure  to  do  in  thought. 
Poverty  throws  a  man  on  himself,  and  he 
is  happiest  and  best  when  he  is  making 
the  most  of  himself.  His  pleasures,  being 
simple  and  intellectual,  are  lasting.  He  is 
relieved  of  a  lot  of  worry  about  yachts, 
starch,  balls,  dresses,  precedence,  and  fluff; 
and  he  does  n't  have  insomnia  because  the 
papers  failed  to  get  his  name  "  among 
those  present "  at  the  dinner  to  Lord  de 
Livrus.  There  is  a  man  who  struggled 
for  years  to  get  into  the  set  that  calls  it- 
self society  and  strangely  overweens  itself 
because  Jenkins  hangs  on  its  skirts  and 
reports  its  breathings  in  the  public  prints. 
Ever  since  he  got  in  he  has  been  wonder- 
ing why  he  did  it.  We  are  all  rainbow- 
chasers.  The  pains  of  poverty,  where  they 
occur,  depend  on  the  width  of  the  gap  be- 
tween a  victim's  material  aspirations  and 
his  possessions.  The  poorest  people  I 
know  are  bankers  and  speculators  with 
yearly  incomes  of  $50,000  or  so,  and  two 


SUMMER  83 

houses  to  keep.  The  chief  blessing  of 
poverty  is  that  other  folks  don't  ask  you 
to  help  them  to  live. 

Truly,  the  opulence  of  gold  may  comfort 
one,  but  it  cannot  be  a  substitute  for  the 
wealth  of  color  in  our  yard.  No,  it  is  not 
a  vain  statement.  Reason  it  out  for  your- 
self: limitless  gold,  in  bareness  and  dullness 
and  squalor;  or  next  to  none  of  it,  and 
brightness  and  gaiety  and  liberty  and  ac- 
tion ? 

This  is  when  we  reap  that  which  we 
have  sown  in  the  spring.  We  have  coddled 
it  through  the  frosts,  and  now  we  glean  it 
for  dinner  and  the  neighbors,  and  some 
sprays  and  blossoms  for  the  always  eager 
children  of  the  tenements.  Reginald  Mc- 
Gonigle  comes  over  the  fence  and  helps 
himself,  though  he  does  n't  care  much 
about  flowers.  Few  good  things  come 
without  work, —  it  is  only  the  bad  things 
that  do  that, —  and  my  wife  often  puts  in 
a  morning  when  I  am  at  the  shop,  and  we 
labor  together  for  an  hour  after  I  come 
home  in  the  evening.  Insects  take  most 
of  our  time,  but  there  are  dead  leaves  to 


84  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

pinch  off,  earth  to  stir,  vines  to  train,  en- 
thusiastic bushes  to  trim,  weeds  to  pull, 
grass  to  cut,  cats  to  shoo  away,  and  the 
whole  place  to  water.  If  time  is  worth 
money,  it  is  cheaper  to  buy  flowers  at  the 
shops ;  but  it  is  the  raising  of  them  that 
makes  the  best  fun.  Remit  your  care, 
even  for  a  few  days,  and  the  place  becomes 
"a  sight" 

It  is  surprising  that  weeds  want  so  much 
room.  Tear  them  up,  and  you  see  much 
bare  earth  under  and  about  them.  They 
not  only  steal  the  nutriment  from  the 
flowers,  but  try  to  monopolize  the  sun- 
shine. The  thrifty  weed  is  like  the  thrifty 
man,  and  even  the  thrifty  mind ;  yet  no : 
for  the  best  mind  is  one-sided,  and  does 
not  get  in  the  way  of  lesser  ones.  They 
will  have  it  that  we  ought  to  develop  our 
minds  generally  as  well  as  specifically.  A 
mind  evenly  grown  is  prettier  to  look  at, 
like  the  box-trees  in  old-fashioned  gar- 
dens after  the  gardener  has  trimmed  them ; 
but  shapeliness  is  not  enough :  strength 
and  reliability  are  more. 

The  mind  of  a  Newton,  a  Darwin,  an 


SUMMER  85 

Edison  may,  after  all,  be  big  in  one  de- 
partment, and  in  others  shrunken  from 
disuse.  One  may  even  have  a  mind  like 
a  Turner  or  —  no,  I  will  not  mention  the 
musician's  name  —  that  would  show  itself 
on  the  outside  of  the  head  by  one  big  bump 
in  a  desert  of  depression.  And  here  is 
Got,  dean  of  the  Comedie  Francaise,  claim- 
ing that  in  his  calling  people  get  on  best 
without  minds.  Bother  it  all !  The  worst 
of  thought  in  this  nineteenth  century  is 
that  you  don't  know  what  to  think.  My 
Emerson  and  Bacon,  even  my  Burroughs 
and  Thoreau,  shall  suggest  nothing  to  me 
to-day.  I  will  leave  my  brains  in  the 
house,  and  sit  among  the  petunias  and 
sweet-peas.  For  nature,  even  a  yardful 
of  it,  makes  health  in  her  communicant. 
Get  away  from  self- consciousness.  Think 
not  of  your  mind  nor  of  your  fate.  Why 
be  always  thinking  on  your  end  ?  as  grave- 
yard literature  hath  it.  We  are  here  to 
live,  not  to  die.  Continue  the  good  work 
that  those  might  have  done  who  are  gone. 
So  shall  you  be  prepared  to  die. 

There  may  be  matters  that  people  hold 


86  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

more  different  minds  about  than  gardening, 
but  I  doubt.it.  The  study  of  it  from  maga- 
zines and  floriculturists  is  an  experience  to 
blister  the  understanding  and  destroy  con- 
fidence in  man.  I  bought  some  roses. 

"  Don't  you  water  'em  much,"  said  the 
man  who  sold  them  to  me ;  "for  if  you  do 
you  are  sure  to  rot  them.  They  '11  send  their 
roots  down  and  get  all  the  water  they  want." 

The  man  was  so  confident  he  aroused 
my  suspicions,  so  I  went  to  a  magazine  to 
see  if  he  knew  his  business.  He  did  n't ; 
for  the  periodical  put  stress  on  watering> 
and  said  that  roses  could  not  do  without 
it.  They  needed  sun.  Then  I  tried  an- 
other magazine.  It  had  nothing  to  say 
about  water  or  lime  or  sun,  but  it  insisted 
on  very  rich  earth,  and  on  letting  the 
bushes  alone  after  they  were  set  out. 
Then  I  tackled  a  gardener,  and  he  said : 
"  Roses  ?  Well,  they  're  kind  of  unsatis- 
factory ;  have  so  many  diseases  and  bugs ; 
but  if  you  '11  dust  them  with  tobacco  and 
use  a  sandy  soil  and  give  them  manure- 
water  and  let  them  have  a  drink  when 
they  look  thirsty,  and  stir  the  earth  up 


SUMMER  87 

around  them  every  little  while,  they  will 
generally  bloom,  sometimes." 

And  then  I  looked  up  the  boss  of  a  large 
flower-shop  and  asked  him,  and  he  said : 
"  Roses  will  live  out  and  bloom  all  the 
time  in  any  kind  of  a  soil,  and  it  does  n't 
make  any  difference  whether  they  have 
light  or  shade." 

Now,  then,  what  are  you  going  to  do 
about  it  ?  I  'm  going  to  keep  on  treating 
mine  as  I  treat  the  rest  of  the  plants:  weed 
them,  shower  them  at  evening,  and  pick  the 
worms  off.  Then  if  they  won't  bloom  they 
can  make  way  for  something  that  will.  I 
may  mention  that  the  only  roses  that  gave 
us  any  satisfaction  were  the  cheap,  com- 
mon kinds  that  were  well  grown  before  we 
bought  them.  The  dwarfs,  so  pretty  in 
the  catalogues,  were  a  mean  and  measly 
lot,  producing  perhaps  one  flower  apiece ; 
and  the  crimson  rambler  that  was  to  cover 
our  fence  with  pounds  of  bloom,  promptly 
rambled  down  into  the  earth  and  stayed 
there,  like  our  California  violets  that  were 
to  bear  flowers  something  less  large  than 
saucers. 


88  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

But  if  roses  do  not  always  behave  in 
town  as  you  expect  them  to,  there  are 
other  flowers  that  surpass  expectation. 
The  fleur-de-lis  (flower  of  Louis  —  the 
"  royal  lily "  of  France,  which  is  not  a 
lily,  and  belongs  to  us  as  much  as  to  Eu- 
rope) is  one  of  those  steady,  reliable  growths 
that  nobody  should  be  without.  We  put 
ours  into  a  clump,  and  as  they  have  grown 
they  have  matted  together,  so  that  for  a 
month  we  have  a  gorgeous  array  of  white, 
yellow,  blue,  and  purple  flowers,  faintly  fra- 
grant and  greatly  satisfying.  Insects  do 
not  make  too  much  havoc  with  them,  and 
they  almost  never  touch  the  blooms. 

Then  there  are  morning-glories  that  sow 
themselves  like  weeds,  and  petunias  that 
flower  all  summer,  ditto  geraniums,  and 
the  sunny  nasturtium  with  its  variants  of 
lemon,  gold,  orange,  scarlet,  red,  and  crim- 
son, the  modest  yet  showy  portulaca,  and 
sundry  others.  But  you  do  not  have  to  buy 
anything.  Raise  wild  flowers.  Every  va- 
cant lot  has  them,  and  the  suburbs  are  gay 
with  dozens  of  species  all  the  way  from 
April  to  snow-time.  I  have  never  been 


SUMMER  89 

without  them  since  we  occupied  our  pres- 
ent quarters,  and  there  are  few  things  to 
beat  our  golden-rod,  daisies,  violets,  butter- 
cups, and  dandelions.  We  have  a  wild 
corner  where  these  and  other  plants  thrive 
among  ferns  and  mosses,  and  it  is  the 
prettiest  and  most  reliable  part  of  the  yard. 

The  golden-rod  was  sown  by  accident. 
It  was  supposed  to  be  something  choice, 
and  we  watched  and  watered  and  weeded 
it.  After  it  was  a  foot  or  so  out  of  ground 
the  leaves  began  to  look  oddly  familiar.  It 
was  perhaps  two  feet  tall  before  we  recog- 
nized it  fairly  as  the  roadside  weed  and 
breeder  of  hay-fever,  in  other  people;  but 
it  was  then  so  green  and  fair  that  we  could 
not  bear  to  tear  it  up.  We  took  up  only 
a  root  or  so  to  set  nearer  to  the  house,  and 
in  September  we  had  two  bouquets  of  yel- 
low as  pretty  as  one  would  wish  to  see. 
Next  year  the  plants  had  increased  the 
number  of  their  shoots,  ran  to  a  height  of 
five  feet,  and  bloomed  copiously.  Last 
year  they  were  six  feet  high,  and  their 
flower-spikes  were  majestic. 

So  with  our  "  jimson-weed."     It  should 


90  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

be  explained,  for  the  enlightenment  of 
the  very  few  who  don't  know,  that  the 
name  is  a  corruption  of  Jamestown  weed, 
as  the  plant  spread  itself  liberally  over  the 
site  of  Jamestown,  Virginia,  after  that  town 
had  been  burned  in  1676,  as  the  only  way 
to  keep  the  scampish  and  dunderheaded 
Berkeley  out  of  the  place.  How  this  par- 
ticular weed  got  into  our  premises  nobody 
knows  ;  but  without  warning  or  planting  it 
just  came  up  and  grew.  There  is  none 
other  within  a  thousand  feet  of  us,  I  should 
say ;  the  wind  certainly  did  not  carry  the 
seeds,  and  I  should  not  suppose  that  birds 
would,  either,  for  they  are  poison  —  at 
least  to  featherless  bipeds.  And  being 
there,  I  made  the  best  of  it,  and  before 
cool  weather  set  in  it  had  become  an  ex- 
hibition. But  I  find  that  others  have  dis- 
covered it  as  a  flower,  for  a  seedsman's 
catalogue,  lately  arrived,  sets  forth  the 
merits  of  Datura  Stramonium,  which  is  an 
alias  for  the  humble  jimson.  It  likewise 
rejoices  in  the  name  of  thorn-apple  in  some 
localities. 

"  Hello  !     You  Ve  got  a  castor-oil  plant 


SUMMER  91 

back  there,  have  n't  you  ?  "  exclaimed  one 
visitor,  as  he  entered  our  reservation ;  and 
he  would  n't  believe  it,  for  a  while,  when  I 
told  him  it  was  jimson.  That  was  after 
several  weeks  of  feeding  and  watering  and 
stirring  of  the  earth  about  its  roots.  Hav- 
ing made  a  cultivated  plant  of  it,  it  re- 
warded us  by  inviting  in  a  lot  of  insects  and 
blooming  profusely.  It  has  a  regal  and 
tropical  look,  with  its  sleek  stem  and  huge 
leaves ;  and  its  long  lavender  trumpets, 
streaked  with  purple  and  delicately  per- 
fumed, are  as  fine  as  if  the  plant  were  ex- 
pensive. The  flowers  last  but  a  day  or 
so,  then  droop.  We  find  them  on  the  day 
after  blooming  collapsed  and  depending 
from  the  long,  thread-like  pistil  at  the 
base  of  which  the  nutty-looking  fruit  is 
forming.  Its  pet  pest  is  a  tiny  black  bee- 
tle that  peppers  the  leaves  with  holes. 
The  stramonium  would  be  acknowledged 
as  a  horticultural  masterpiece  if  only  it 
would  get  rid  of  its  smell  —  the  sickish, 
soupy  odor  that  arises  whenever  it  is  jos- 
tled. But  we  put  up  with  evil  smells  from 
other  plants  —  the  lantana,  for  example. 


92  NATURE   IN   A  CITY  YARD 

No;  the  objection  to  stramonium,  as  to  all 
other  wild  flowers,  lies  in  its  cheapness. 
The  vacant  lots  are  full  of  it,  and  it  is 
called  a  weed ;  so  that  settles  it. 

Nothing  better  than  the  jimson  illus- 
trates the  necessity  a  plant  is  under  of 
blooming  when  you  pick  its  wilted  flowers, 
and  refuse  to  let  it  go  to  fruit.  A  plant  has 
a  maternal  desire  for  offspring,  and  when 
thwarted  it  constantly  renews  its  attempt 
to  make  seed.  The  flower  is  simply  a 
means  to  an  end.  Its  odor  and  color  draw 
the  insect  who,  in  his  search  for  food,  un- 
consciously fertilizes  it ;  and  conception 
occurs  as  soon  as  the  pollen  of  one  flower 
is  dusted  on  the  pistil  of  the  next  by  the 
legs  or  wings  of  the  moth  or  bee.  Some 
plants  have  not  vitality  enough  to  form  a 
second  crop  of  blossoms  when  the  first  has 
been  picked ;  but  others  crack  along  all 
summer,  blooming  prodigiously.  Such 
others  are  the  petunias,  geraniums,  phlox, 
pansies,  and  oxalis.  Indeed,  almost  all 
plants,  except  those  of  the  rose  and  lily 
tribe,  will  put  forth  a  second  series  of 
flowers  if  the  first  is  clipped.  I  made 


SUMMER  93 

a  moth-mullein  bloom  three  times  in  a 
few  weeks  after  transplanting  it  from  a 
vacant  lot,  by  cutting  off  its  seed-pods ; 
and  the  balsams  were  long  kept  in  flower 
by  the  same  treatment.  That  is  one  of 
the  charms  of  the  garden  :  the  flowers  give 
back  more  than  you  take  away. 

And  there  are  the  yarrows,  pink  and 
white,  and  their  humbler  cousin  the  cam- 
omile. Cultivate  a  yarrow.  No  prettier 
plant  grows.  But  let  it  have  its  own  wild 
way  so  far  as  you  can.  So  with  the  cam- 
omile, which  is  an  honest  as  well  as  a  free 
and  modest  plant,  and  if  it  has  over-much 
attention  it  will  stunt  and  sicken.  The 
camomile  that  comes  out  of  dusty  lots, 
generously  hiding  bricks  and  old  bottles, 
is  among  the  soundest  and  largest.  It  is 
but  one  of  the  half-noticed  and  wholly  mis- 
prized beneficences  that  the  town  does 
not  deserve.  Coddle  the  plant,  shade  it, 
manure  it,  and  you  will  have  done  what 
the  flatterer  does  to  a  man  from  whom  he 
wants  some  favor;  it  will  droop  away 
from  you  and  withdraw  painfully  from 
the  unwelcome  service.  Sensitive,  sensible 


94  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

plant!  Left  to  itself,  it  may  heighten  its 
beauty  or  take  on  strangeness.  Hamilton 
Gibson  said  that  he  once  found  a  head 
of  yarrow  blossoms  that  was  surrounded 
with  rays  like  a  daisy  or  a  camomile. 
The  foliage  of  yarrow  and  camomile  are 
so  alike  that  it  is  easy  to  mistake  the  one  for 
the  other ;  but  pinch  a  leaf  of  each  to  ex- 
tract the  smell,  and  the  difference  is  plain : 
the  camomile  is  rank  and  herby,  the  yar- 
row spicy  and  nutty.  The  flowers  are 
widely  different,  and  the  camomile  is  of- 
ten called  a  daisy  by  city  folks  because  it 
is  yellow  with  white  rays. 

What  a  wonder  it  is  that  people  who 
like  flowers  do  not  make  more  of  the  wild 
ones  !  Take  the  dandelion,  noblest  of  the 
early  blooms,  and  the  only  fearless  one, 
and  what  might  not  be  made  of  it  ?  Fancy 
a  window  full  of  these  golden  disks  in  win- 
ter! I  chose  one  of  these  plants  out  of 
half  a  hundred  in  our  yard  one  spring,  and 
made  an  aristocrat  of  it  for  a  month,  not 
taking  it  from  its  place,  but  merely  giving 
it  extra  attention.  It  had  manure-water 
now  and  then,  it  was  sprinkled  every  even- 


SUMMER  95 

ing,  broken  and  faded  leaves  were  picked 
off,  and  an  effort  was  made  to  keep  down 
the  florescence.  Our  dog,  Arthur,  and 
even  Skimplejinks,  the  cat,  interfered  to 
some  degree  with  the  experiment;  but 
even  after  many  leaves  and  blossoms  had 
been  torn  off,  the  plant  formed  a  heavy 
mat  of  green,  and  the  flower-heads,  though 
not  large,  were  numerous.  It  was  not  so 
successful  a  dandelion  —  absurd  corrup- 
tion of  dent  de  lion — as  one  can  often  find 
by  the  wayside,  but  it  was  the  best  in  our 
yard.  There  was  one  that  bore  twenty- 
five  heads  of  flowers  at  a  time,  yet  the 
plant  was  so  small  I  could  cover  it  with 
my  hand.  Dandelion  roots  are  so  long 
that  they  do  not  take  kindly  to  the  re- 
straints of  civilization.  I  put  a  small  one 
into  a  pot  about  six  inches  deep,  which  I 
plunged  in  one  of  the  beds.  Through  the 
hole  in  the  bottom  the  roots  cast  many 
threads  that  had  to  be  torn  when  it  was 
taken  up  for  winter  housing,  but  the  plant 
bloomed  in  captivity. 

Speaking  of  cultivated  plants,  I  brought 
in  a  cinquefoil  from  the  vacant  lot  across 


96  NATURE   IN  A  CITY  YARD 

the  way,  potted  it,  and  sank  it  in  a  bed  to 
see  if  cultivation  would  improve  it.  I  be- 
lieve it  did,  a  little.  On  taking  it  up,  I  was 
surprised  to  find  the  interior  of  the  pot 
lined  with  tough  pale-brown  paper,  so 
that  when  the  plant  was  pulled  out  it 
brought  this  paper  with  it,  a  perfect  cast 
of  the  pot.  I  was  sure  I  had  put  nothing 
into  it  but  earth,  and  a  chip  of  brick  to 
secure  drainage,  and  this  phenomenon  puz- 
zled me.  I  tore  up  the  wrapping  and  dis- 
covered that  it  was  connected  by  many 
threads  with  the  roots  of  the  plant.  The 
mystery  was  solved :  the  paper  was  a  sheet 
of  rootlets.  The  pot  was  small,  and  so,  in 
their  effort  to  get  out  and  drink,  the  root- 
lets had  gone  up  and  down  the  inner  side, 
weaving  a  fine  sheath  for  the  bit  of  earth 
in  which  the  cinquefoil  had  been  set.  It 
is  an  odd  fact  that  some  domesticated  plants 
do  not  flower  until  they  are  pot-bound. 

Not  all  wild  flowers  submit  to  care. 
They  get  into  wrong  soils  and  situations, 
and  plants  do  not  survive  misfits  so  well 
as  men.  Few  of  us  are  where  or  what  we 
want  to  be,  and  the  world  is  full  of  round 


SUMMER  97 

holes  with  square  human  pegs  in  them. 
If  a  plant  is  not  rightly  placed,  it  simply 
dies  and  gets  out  of  its  trouble.  Yet  some- 
times, when  we  think  it  dead,  it  is  only  in- 
valided and  is  biding  its  time.  It  is  a 
plant  that  loves  sand  and  sun,  and  has  got 
into  a  shaded  piece  of  muck ;  or  it  wants 
shade  and  repose,  and  its  foothold  is  hot 
and  windy :  but  a  few  days  of  drought  or 
rain,  or  warmth  or  coolness,  will  revive 
the  forlorn  little  thing,  and  it  pops  back 
into  daylight  once  more,  puzzled,  maybe, 
but  robust  and  glad. 

And  how  seldom  has  a  misplaced  man 
an  experience  like  this  !  Even  our  yard  is 
not  a  hermitage.  If  only  the  jangle  of  the 
door-bell  did  not  penetrate  to  this  seclu- 
sion of  phlox  and  petunias !  It  is  the 
world's  demand  to  be  let  in  to  play  the 
spy  and  gossip.  It  is  the  analogue  of 
the  Westerner  who,  rinding  a  cabin  in  the 
wilderness  with  curtains  drawn,  reached 
through  the  window  and  brushed  them 
aside,  inquiring,  "  What  's  going  on  here 
so  darned  private  ? "  In  a  sense  it  re- 
minds us  of  an  alleged  and  supposititious 


98  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

duty  that  we  owe  to  the  world ;  some- 
thing too  much  of  our  debt  to  the  world, 
and  of  our  claims  upon  it ;  something  too 
much  of  dragooning  into  the  sciolistic  so- 
cialism of  the  time  —  a  blind  reaching  for 
more  and  mere  animal  comforts.  A  man's 
duty  is  mainly  to  himself.  If  he  absolve 
the  world  from  its  part  in  the  conventional 
arrangement,  the  world  must  do  the  like 
for  him,  even  though,  in  loving  nature 
more  than  man,  one  resigns  some  of  his 
humanity,  and  shapes  his  destiny  to  larger, 
rougher,  more  unsocial  ends  than  those 
of  his  fellows.  Mountains  become  more 
than  people  to  him,  so  he  goes  back  to 
primal  strength  and  eke  to  savagery. 

We  are  afraid  of  unpopularity  —  shock- 
ingly afraid.  We  would  rather  be  wrong 
than  unusual.  Unconventionality  is  a 
greater  offense  than  sin.  Litter  the  street 
with  rubbish,  breed  contagion  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, be  a  prize-fighter  or  an  alder- 
man, swindle  your  friend  in  a  stock  deal, 
and  the  law  will  not  trouble  you ;  but  cut 
the  two  buttons  from  the  back  of  your 
coat,  let  your  hair  grow,  wear  sandals, 


SUMMER  99 

bring  your  favorite  hippopotamus  into  the 
house,  leave  off  a  crinoline  or  bustle  when 
those  horrors  are  rife,  and  whew !  the  gab- 
ble and  the  scolding  !  The  laws  laid  down 
by  Mrs.  Grundy  are  the  most  stringent 
of  all  laws.  Shall  we  ever  wake  up  and  do 
our  own  thinking  ?  Let  loose  a  Luther, 
or  Bellamy,  or  Marx,  and  what  a  coil ! 
Because  they  tell  something  that  the  others 
have  not  told.  How  afraid  we  have  been 
of  science,  because  its  facts  disagree  with 
the  whimsies  we  have  been  expecting  it 
to  prove  !  We  ought  to  love  a  revolution- 
ist, even  one  of  destructive  theories,  be- 
cause he  puts  life  enough  into  us  to  make 
us  complain,  at  all  events. 

Look  at  the  superstitions  that  have  laid 
hold  on  us  —  superstitions  about  wealth 
and  society,  and  other  superstitions  about 
equality  ;  superstitions  about  secret  frater- 
nities and  spring  medicine,  equinoctial 
storms  and  amber  beads,  goose-bones, 
Bhagavat  Gitas,  unlucky  Fridays,  and  night 
air.  Superstition  is  a  roundabout  process 
of  false  reasoning;  and  it  is  harder  to  reason 
falsely  than  right ;  yet  see  how  we  keep  on 


loo  NATURE  IN  A   CITY  YARD 

doing  it.  Let  one  man  swear  that  thirteen 
is  an  unlucky  number,  and  you  will  have 
to  disprove  it  thirteen  times  to  prevent  an 
epidemic  of  belief.  It  all  comes  through 
fear,  and  dates  back  to  the  time  when  fear 
was  a  proper  and  self-preservative  condi- 
tion among  men.  It  kept  them  at  a  safe 
distance  from  each  other,  and  from  moso- 
saurs  and  mastodons.  Most  people  have 
to  be  afraid  of  something  in  order  to  keep 
their  moral  balance.  Among  the  roughs 
this  fetish  is  the  police,  among  the  better 
sort  it  is  law,  government,  and  govern- 
ors; and  when  you  meet  people  who 
think  disrespectful  things  of  honorable 
bar-keepers  and  the  equator,  you  will  find 
them  cringing  before  an  Idea :  their  own 
Idea,  too.  As  to  — 

Ah,  I  see  what  's  the  matter.  The 
thermometer  in  my  yard  marks  98°  in  the 
shade,  and  the  humidity  is  about  80. 
States  of  mind  are  likely  to  happen  in  a 
city  summer.  I  will  get  out  the  hose  and 
spray  the  grass.  Its  brightening  color 
will  bring  up  visions  of  the  country. 

Since  the  yard  has  been  watered  regu- 


SUMMER  101 

larly  toadstools  have  increased  in  number. 
There  are  at  least  two  varieties,  and  on 
some  days  the  ground  is  dotted  with  them. 
The  beds  that  contain  the  heavier  plants, 
which  cast  deep  shadows,  are  rife  with  cru- 
cibulum  vulgare,  the  oddest  fungus  that 
grows.  At  first  it  was  mistaken  for  the 
seed-cup  of  the  portulaca,  left  from  last 
year,  for  it  is  dry  and  rusty-looking;  but 
the  appearance  of  new  ones,  and  their 
change  from  balls  to  bowls,  did  away  with 
that  notion.  The  cup  is  one  third  to  one 
half  an  inch  in  diameter,  and  holds  what 
appear  to  be  black  seeds.  They  are  not 
seeds,  however,  but  spore-cases,  lightly 
held  to  the  cup  by  white  threads,  and 
quite  like  eggs  in  a  nest. 

These  fungi  and  oddities  always  make 
us  look  into  them.  Flax-blooms  and  their 
like  are  monotonously  perfect  —  classic. 
The  classic  is  the  perfection  of  the  regular. 
The  picturesque,  on  the  contrary,  is  de- 
light in  the  irregular.  Ragged  vegetation 
is  picturesque;  so  are  the  woods;  so  are 
orchids  and  cacti.  Gardens  are  introduc- 
tions of  the  classic  into  nature  —  the  hu- 


102  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

manizing  of  nature.  It  depends  on  the 
humanizer  whether  the  process  is  quietly 
submitted  to  or  not.  But  I  am  glad  to 
see  that  parks  and  gardens  are  no  longer 
"  slicked  up "  as  they  used  to  be.  Vain 
man  has  discovered  that  nature  can  do  some 
things  well.  For  two  thousand  years  we 
have  been  influenced  in  matters  of  form 
by  the  Greeks.  The  Greeks  are  a  little 
too  perfect  for  some  moods.  Their  work 
has  not  enough  in  reserve.  It  is  like  Mo- 
zart's music,  all  light  and  no  shade.  Let 
us  have  some  rudenesses  and  weaknesses. 
Let  us  be  grandly  and  gloomily  Gothic, 
once  in  a  while. 

Yet  the  Parthenon  has  subtle  and  inten- 
tional irregularities.  There  is  not  a  line 
in  it  which  is  mathematically  straight.  Its 
architects  must  have  studied  the  charm  of 
diversity  and  taken  lessons  from  the  flowers 
and  trees.  Nothing  exactly  conforms  to 
rule,  and  sometimes  rule  is  set  at  naught. 
For  instance,  I  have  seen  this  summer  a 
double  wild  cherry — two  stones  and  one 
stem — a  pear  growing  absolutely  upright, 
and  flowers  that  freaked  unaccountably  in 


SUMMER  103 

shape  and  color.  Such  things  emphasize 
a  general  regularity,  yet  we  are  pleased 
with  the  latent  chance  of  divergence :  it 
gives  latitude.  Indeed,  in  all  forms  and  ex- 
pressions of  worth  and  beauty  we  swerve 
from  our  original  aim  and  bend  toward  its 
opposite.  Painting  that  has  no  temper  of 
breadth,  tone,  sobriety, —  repellent  things 
to  the  new  eye, —  how  sugary,  thin,  and 
pretty-pretty  it  is  !  In  music  we  would 
tire  of  major  harmonies  forever,  and  want 
a  season  of  minor,  which  is  nearer  to  dis- 
cord,— yes,  and  even  a  diminished  chord 
and  discord  itself  for  contrast's  sake.  We 
do  not  take  our  colors  in  prismatic  purity ; 
we  do  not  want  our  sculpture,  bronze,  and 
porcelains  in  weak,  smooth  forms.  The 
palate  objects  to  pure  sugar,  and  will  have 
a  hint  of  acid  or  of  bitter.  Man  will  not 
be  led  wholly  by  his  senses,  nor  suffer  him- 
self to  be  confined  by  their  experience. 
Especially  in  the  outer  world  should  he 
be  willing  to  merge  his  prejudice,  for  when 
he  is  fairly  and  sympathetically  in  the  heart 
of  nature  he  does  not  find  its  spirit  reserved 
and  distant,  as  one  philosopher  declares  it 


io4  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

to  be,  but  close  and  lovable  and  as  near 
frank  as  it  can  be  in  silence.  Its  magnifi- 
cences are  human. 

Say,  rather,  our  humanity  still  finds  it- 
self a  brother  to  it.  Carlyle  and  some 
others  who  are  interested  only  in  men 
complain  if  one  writes  of  scenery :  as  if 
Thoreau's  rhapsodies  and  Burroughs's  stud- 
ies and  Blackmore's  descriptions  were  not 
as  well  worth  the  effort  as  Carlyle's  dys- 
peptic grumbles  at  the  very  fellows  who 
entertain  him.  The  vanity  of  men  in 
claiming  to  be  all !  As  if  there  would  be 
no  bears  or  turtles  to  enjoy  the  world  if 
man  were  not  on  hand  to  oversee  them  ! 
Man's  study  is  himself?  Well,  perhaps; 
but  how  can  he  know  himself  if  he  fails  to 
know  that  grander,  finer,  more  enduring 
creation  that  has  spawned  him  on  this  drift- 
ing globule  of  matter  ?  In  nature  we  touch 
life.  The  world's — creation's — vital  juices 
course  in  every  sapling.  In  the  animals 
who  have  shaken  their  roots  loose  and 
gambol  among  the  fields  those  juices  are 
stronger  than  among  those  who  have  walled 
and  shedded  themselves  away  from  the 


SUMMER  105 

earth,  air,  and  light, — men  and  barnacles, 
— and  delivered  themselves  to  abstractions. 
The  sun  !  Light !  Heat !  Let  us  go  to 
the  source.  Let  us  be  Parsees.  Be  distant 
with  men,  once  in  a  while,  for  sanity's  sake. 
Let  their  tumult  come  to  you  softened,  as 
their  Sunday  bells  sound  across  the  fields. 
Then  they,  too,  will  seem  to  fit  into  the 
scheme  of  things,  which  is  all  beauty,  ex- 
cept where  man  has  made  it  otherwise. 

And  I  cannot  think  our  yard  is  other- 
wise in  its  dress  of  flowers  this  summer. 


VII 

AUTUMN 

OF  all  seasons  in  town,  autumn  is  most 
irksome  mentally.  Summer  causes 
more  profanity  and  drink,  but  autumn  is 
the  time  when  people  want  to  be  out  of 
doors.  Man  takes  an  incurable  interest  in 
himself.  Let  him  get  up  a  fair  to  show 
what  he  can  do,  and  how  he  runs  to  see  it ! 
The  greater  fair  of  nature — he  has  n't 
always  time  for  that.  Except  in  autumn. 
And  there  never  was  so  rank  a  citizen 
that  he  did  not  look  at  the  fall  color  and 
exult  in  it.  Even  the  English  visitor  who 
said  that  our  October  woods  were  "raw- 
ther  tawdry,  ye  know,"  did  us  the  honor 
to  look  at  them.  With  the  chilling  of  the 
nights  and  the  passing  of  the  flowers,  the 
yard  is  left  partly  to  take  care  of  itself. 
Some  of  the  plants,  being  annuals,  in  seed, 

106 


AUTUMN  107 

or  past  the  time  of  it  and  promising  no 
more,  have  been  pulled  up ;  a  few  have 
been  cut  down  ;  some  have  been  mulched  ; 
and  the  place  no  longer  wears  the  tropic 
look  of  summer.  In  the  shortening  after- 
noons I  shower  the  grass  with  a  hose,  and 
keep  that  bright ;  but  the  best  of  the  flower- 
time  is  passing.  So  I  steal  away  on  my 
bicycle,  and  run  through  the  parks  and  out 
on  Long  Island,  and  on  the  roads  that  over- 
look the  Hudson ;  for  the  color  of  the  gar- 
den now  is  as  nothing  to  the  color  that 
fills  the  woods.  There  are  yellow,  orange, 
scarlet,  crimson,  purple,  brown,  green, 
sometimes  confusing,  always  gorgeous,  tri- 
umphant, joyous,  exhilarating.  There  are 
no  tapestries,  no  Oriental  rugs,  no  Chinese 
porcelains,  no  silks  from  the  East,  like  unto 
these  leaves  of  beech,  birch,  poplar,  ma- 
ple, sumac,  oak,  ampelopsis,  and  woodbine. 
The  poplar  is  nearly  at  the  top  of  the 
gamut  with  its  pale  yellow,  the  oak  at  the 
bottom  with  its  crimson  bronze  mottled  by 
dark  green ;  but  the  chief  factor  in  the 
celebration,  the  carnival  that  precedes  the 
winter  rest,  is  the  maple,  most  gorgeous 


io8  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

thing  that  grows,  with  every  shade  of  red 
and  yellow  known  to  the  painter  in  its 
leaves,  and  the  sun  turning  them  into 
gems  and  stained-glass  windows.  Why  is 
it  that  with  our  commercial  determination 
we  have  never  made  merchandise  of  this 
splendor  ?  Leaves  that  have  been  waxed 
and  ironed  keep  their  color  for  a  long 
time,  and  one  would  suppose  that  a  bou- 
quet of  them  would  sell  in  the  highways 
as  readily  as  roses.  I  gladly  note  that  they 
are  beginning  to  sell  daisies  and  golden- 
rod  in  town,  and  a  girl  in  Nantucket  picked 
up  $150  in  a  summer  by  making  up  books 
of  pressed  wild-flowers  of  that  windy, 
ocean-pounded  moorland. 

With  a  lessening  in  the  humidity  that  is 
such  a  cause  of  suffering  in  summer,  the 
temper  of  the  populace  improves.  You 
hear  less  squalling  and  slapping  when  you 
pass  the  tenements  (may  the  man  be  for- 
given who  invented  those  abominations  !), 
and  there  are  not  so  many  tired  eyes 
and  lagging  steps  in  the  streets.  Man  was 
not  born  to  be  an  amphibian.  He  pre- 
fers his  air  and  water  separate.  Happy,  ye 


AUTUMN  109 

dwellers  amid  the  hills,  who  know  not  the 
sweltering  August  fogs  and  hazes  of  the 
shore  ! 

Autumn  color  is  obviously  a  result  of 
ripening.  You  find  it  without  frost.  In 
October  the  maples  are  often  as  brilliant  in 
Florida  as  they  are  in  Maine,  and  the  con- 
trast they  make  with  the  dark  green  of  the 
palms  and  the  lush  green  of  the  under- 
growth is  startling.  We  need  pure  air, 
however,  for  this  color;  and  the  town  is 
gray  and  brown,  as  it  always  is,  the  shade- 
trees  merely  withering.  The  west-  and 
east-side  streets  of  New  York  are  the 
ugliest  places  in  all  the  earth.  Every 
spear  of  grass,  every  tree,  has  been  care- 
fully rooted  up,  that  brawling  humanity 
may  have  nothing  green  in  its  eye  and  its 
way ;  and  if  in  better  streets  you  find  a  row 
of  starveling  maples,  they  show  no  gaiety 
in  these  days.  Yet  just  across  the  river 
the  noble  Palisades  are  sheeted  in  reds  and 
yellows  that  fruit  in  the  sun  resplendently. 
And  even  in  our  yard  the  evil  air  steals  in 
and  rusts  the  leaves  where  they  should 
glow.  The  blossoms  of  the  gourd  no 


I lo  NATURE  IN   A  CITY  YARD 

longer  emit  their  refined  musky  odor  in 
the  morning,  but  the  fruit  makes  spots  of 
gorgeous  orange  against  the  dulling  leaves. 
Chrysanthemums  and  cosmos  are  coming 
to  flower,  and  dandelions  are  putting  up  a 
second  crop.  The  little  sheep-sorrel  that 
is  red  in  the  spring  is  likewise  red  in  the 
fall,  and  is  one  of  the  few  plants  that  have 
vivacity  in  town.  Certain  of  the  lesser 
things  have  vanished.  The  gradual  but 
utter  disappearance  of  many  plants  after 
flowering  is  one  of  the  oddest  and  most 
unaccountable  things  in  nature.  There  is 
the  little  Scleranthus  annuus,  for  example : 
where  does  it  go  ? 

I  have  mentioned  our  toads.  They  were 
brought  home  from  the  suburbs  in  a  botany- 
box  while  young  —  so  young  they  could 
have  been  put  into  a  walnut-shell.  Their 
fare  of  insects  has  been  so  plentiful  that  they 
have  waxed  fat,  the  first  inhabitant  hav- 
ing taken  on  almost  unseemly  proportions. 
The  ability  of  the  fellow  to  disappear  is 
surprising.  You  beat  about  the  bush,  as 
it  were,  and  turn  the  leaves,  but  he  never 
shows  up  until  he  is  good  and  ready,  when 


AUTUMN  III 

he  will  pop  out  from  vacancy  under  your 
very  nose.  Probably  he  buries  himself  at 
the  first  frost.  One  of  our  earlier  and  ex- 
perimental batches  of  toads  never  appeared 
again  after  their  first  winter.  I  fear  they 
suffered  in  the  early  spading  of  the  flower- 
beds, either  being  jammed  deep,  beyond 
hope  of  resurrection,  or  cut  in  twain  by 
the  ignorant  implement. 

Toads  are  not  pretty,  but  they  are  use- 
ful in  eating  insects,  and  there  is  no  harm 
in  them.  The  bigger  toad  is  active  about 
nightfall,  but  he  hops  into  the  shade  if  he 
sees  me  coming.  When  I  take  him  up 
he  discharges  water  and  tries  to  get  away, 
ducking  and  flinching  every  time  I  stroke 
his  head.  One  hot  afternoon  I  discovered 
him  in  a  dense  growth  of  sweet  alyssum 
by  his  croak,  a  short,  faint  hen-like  note 
several  times  repeated.  When  one  of  the 
children  took  him  up  he  croaked  in  his 
hands.  Later  in  the  season  he  became 
more  vocal.  This  toad  appeared  to  get 
his  growth  in  about  two  months,  and  his 
voice  came  with  his  stature.  On  taking 
him  up  in  the  fall,  he  would  occasionally 


112  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

utter  a  low  "gur-r-r-r,"  with  rippling  throat. 
I  found  him  one  morning  on  the  water- 
hyacinth.  He  had  to  climb  over  a  rockery 
set  with  cactus  to  get  there ;  and  in  run- 
ning from  me  he  jumped  square  into  one  of 
the  most  spiny  and  vicious  of  these  plants, 
apparently  without  injury  to  himself  or 
the  plant. 

There  used  to  be  a  belief  that  toads  were 
poisonous.  A  dog  will  not  hold  one  in  his 
mouth  very  long,  they  say.  I  never  hold 
them  long  that  way,  either.  But  I  often 
hold  them  in  my  hand,  to  their  distress 
probably,  and  find  that  they  do  not  "  give 
warts."  And  that  belief  is  like  many  an- 
other. We  ought  to  get  up  a  society  of 
exploders — men  who  will  blow  up  fallacies 
of  custom,  government,  laws,  and  quota- 
tion. How  many  venerable  sayings  would 
be  killed  off  by  such  a  society  !  You  hear, 
for  instance,  that  "you  can't  make  bricks 
without  straw."  Unless  you  have  been  in 
the  East,  or  in  Mexico,  which  is  much  the 
same,  you  never  saw  a  brick  with  straw  in 
it.  Haverstraw  bricks  have  never  a  straw. 
They  speak  of  elusive  hopes  as  will-o'-the- 


AUTUMN  113 

wisps.  Well,  there  are  no  will-o'-the-wisps, 
except  in  scientific  books.  Shakspere  tells 
us  that  "  uneasy  lies  the  head  that  wears  a 
crown."  Look  at  the  crowned  heads  of 
Europe.  Are  they  not  a  sleek,  self-satis- 
fied, well-fed,  well-slept  company  of  orna- 
ments ?  Science,  philosophy,  and  art  need 
purgation  by  common-sense.  The  best 
have  the  most  of  this  uncommon  quality. 
People  who  describe  great  men  they  have 
seen  always  exhibit  a  dumb  surprise  that 
they  look  and  act  so  like  other  folks. 
Greatness  never  consists  in  holding  your- 
self above  the  mass,  though  you  may  need 
to  stand  at  one  side  of  it.  You  will  not  be 
seen  at  all  unless  you  are  content  to  stay 
at  the  human  level.  The  great  are  great 
in  common  things.  It  is  the  clear,  patent 
truth  in  Shakspere  that  is  admirable. 

Speaking  of  Shakspere  does  not  remind 
me  of  our  turtle.  I  just  remembered  him 
as  one  of  our  autumn  enlivenments.  He 
is  the  third  we  have  owned,  and  was  im- 
ported from  New  Jersey.  I  don't  know 
what  he  finds  to  eat,  but  he  is  healthy  and 
happy,  though  in  these  chilly  mornings  he 


H4  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

is  apt  to  be  sluggish.  Like  the  toads,  he 
has  ability  in  self-effacement,  and  can  stay 
lost  by  the  quarter-hour  in  our  few  square 
feet  of  yard.  The  youngsters  have  named 
him  Plato — the  same  being  the  name  they 
called  the  others  by,  though  one  had  been 
discovered  to  contain  eggs.  Why  Plato, 
more  than  James  Q.  Smith,  I  do  not  know, 
unless  it  be  for  the  gravity  of  the  creature 
and  the  inscrutability  of  his  wisdom. 

The  carpenter's  dog  is  surprised  and 
interested  when  Plato  toddles  across  the 
yard.  This  dog  climbs  upon  a  lumber-pile 
to  view  the  proceedings  and  bark  his  opin- 
ions. But  the  turtle  does  not  mind.  He 
travels  about  in  his  uncouth  fashion,  get- 
ting his  meals;  and  after  acquiring  nutri- 
ment he  likes  to  cover  himself  with  an  old 
sod  at  the  back  of  the  yard,  where  the  sun 
shines  warm.  He  will  remain  there,  mo- 
tionless, for  hours;  and  wherever  he  may 
be  carried,  he  will  amble  back  to  his  sod 
at  once.  On  being  taken  up,  he  hisses  and 
retires  promptly  within  his  shell ;  though 
if  put  on  the  ground  he  will  try  to  walk 
away,  even  when  one  is  holding  him.  If 


AUTUMN  115 

put  into  water,  he  tries  to  get  out ;  but  after 
a  dry  spell  we  have  held  him  under  run- 
ning water,  and  have  seen  him  drink,  with 
a  slow  elongation  of  the  neck  at  each  swal- 
low. On  a  mild  morning,  after  rain,  he 
takes  a  joy  in  promenades ;  and  from  the 
window  he  seems  to  be  eating  petunias 
and  alyssum,  snapping  at  them  like  a  hen. 
Our  turtles,  like  other  savages,  have  been 
spoiled  by  civilization.  They  fell  into  a 
way  of  coming  into  the  house  out  of  the 
cold.  They  did  not  learn  that  worms  and 
things  are  not  provided  in  a  house;  and 
as  they  refused  to  eat  anything  that  we 
offered  to  them,  they  paid  the  penalty  of 
culture  with  their  lives.  They  refused  to 
bury  themselves  as  the  cold  increased,  and 
lumbered  into  the  kitchen  whenever  the 
door  was  opened,  making  something  of  a 
struggle  to  climb  the  step.  They  knew 
where  it  was  warm ;  and  if  the  door  failed 
to  open,  they  sat  on  the  grass  and  became 
comatose,  like  beggars  who  faint  of  starva- 
tion or  "  throw  fits  "  on  your  door-step  in 
revenge  for  the  refusal  of  drink-money  and 
your  second-best  clothes. 


Il6  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

Plato  I.  was  especially  persistent  in 
coming  in,  so  we  let  him  have  the  run 
of  the  cellar.  He  stayed  awake  until  Jan- 
uary or  so,  bumbling  around  in  the  half- 
darkness,  refusing  such  food  as  we  offered 
to  him,  and  drinking  little ;  and  so  he 
wasted  and  died.  Plato  II.  was  equally 
stubborn.  He  was  stupid  on  cold  days, 
and  often  appeared  to  be  dormant,  for 
he  would  allow  himself  to  be  handled 
without  waking.  So  we  rolled  him  in  a 
carpet,  put  him  in  a  box  in  the  shed,  and 
expected  him  to  sleep  until  spring.  But 
when  the  weather  modified  he  scratched 
his  way  to  freedom  again,  and  stayed  out 
of  doors  for  a  day.  Once  I  took  him  from 
his  wrappings  and  set  him  on  the  grass. 
He  awoke  and  maundered  aimlessly  about 
until  the  sun  began  to  sink,  when  he  drew 
into  his  shell  and  apparently  went  to  sleep 
again.  He  was  returned  to  his  carpet  and 
box,  and  after  a  series  of  bitter  nights, 
when  the  mercury  dropped  to  zero,  he 
was  found  dead  of  freezing. 

Our  autumn  insects  are  lively  until  after 
the  frosts.  One  September  day  there  is  a 


AUTUMN  117 

great  to-do  among  the  ants  in  the  aster 
bed.  Dozens  of  winged  ants  are  out  with 
them.  All  run  in  and  out  in  desperate 
haste  or  anxiety.  Wonder  for  what.  Per- 
haps a  fresh  crop  of  young  ones  has  ar- 
rived. Could  the  rain  have  beaten  in  their 
roofs  ?  Is  this  a  new  arrival  of  slaves  ? 
Or  are  they  holding  an  election  ? 

One  of  the  first  indications  of  the  on- 
coming cold  is  the  retirement  of  the  earth- 
worms. Do  they  feel  the  chill  at  the  sur- 
face, and  burrow  deeper  to  get  away  from 
it  ?  Or  do  the  roots  of  vegetation  strike 
lower  as  the  year  wears  on,  and  do  the 
worms  follow  them,  or  keep  away  from  the 
spread  of  their  meshes  ?  Men  owe  much 
to  these  humble  creatures.  Without  worms 
to  loosen  the  soil,  the  face  of  the  earth 
would  be  a  desert,  dry,  hard,  incapable 
of  supporting  any  other  vegetation  than 
cactus  and  sage-brush.  The  farmer  could 
not  exist  if  it  were  not  for  the  worm.  He 
swallows  his  way  into  the  ground,  ejecting 
the  earth  behind,  instead  of  scratching  his 
way  in  with  claws  that  he  does  not  have. 
And  to  think  that  these  creatures  lift  to 


Ii8  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

the  surface  fifteen  to  twenty  tons  of  earth 
to  the  acre  in  this  manner  every  year  ! 
Soft  as  they  are,  their  muscular  tissue  is 
not  weak.  Stamp  your  foot  near  them 
when  they  are  lying  half  out  of  their  holes 
at  evening,  and  see  how  instantly  they  pull 
themselves  in,  out  of  sight. 

One  of  them,  a  foot  long,  was  found 
wriggling  over  our  flagged  walk,  like  a 
snake,  in  his  haste  to  get  to  cover.  I 
watched  another,  about  six  inches  long 
when  extended,  crawling  over  the  walk. 
On  arriving  at  the  flower-bed,  rich  and 
heavy  with  recent  rain,  he  almost  imme- 
diately began  to  dig.  In  four  minutes  by 
the  watch  he  had  buried  himself,  all  but 
the  tip  of  his  tail.  Fast  going,  for  a  crea- 
ture that  has  no  bony  substance.  When 
the  yard  has  been  manured  and  the  rains 
are  heavy,  the  worms  appear  in  great 
abundance.  They  are  slimy  and  loath- 
some until  you  come  to  know  them ;  but 
when  you  discover  use  in  things  you  cease 
to  fret  about  their  appearance.  I  can  see 
that  their  burrowings  and  castings  loosen 
and  lighten  the  soil,  and  have  never  learned 


AUTUMN  119 

that  they  injured  vegetation.  In  this  they 
differ  from  the  insects  that  depredate  among 
the  leaves ;  and  the  dependence  of  animals 
on  plants  is  painfully,  exasperatingly  ob- 
vious to  any  one  who  tries  to  raise  the 
latter.  It  is  the  killing  and  exile  of  our 
birds,  no  doubt,  that  have  caused  such  an 
alarming  increase  in  vermin  —  weeds  of 
the  animal  kingdom,  creatures  whose  use 
has  not  been  discovered.  Animal  life  is 
in  plant  life  everywhere.  You  find  worms 
curled  in  the  spore-cups  of  lichens. 

I  once  found  a  shelf  fungus  draped  with 
curling  white  threads,  and  wondered  if 
they  could  be  strings  of  loosening  spores  ; 
but  on  breaking  it  open,  I  found  grubs  in- 
side. The  strings  were  their  excreta.  And 
even  in  water  I  have  found  earth-worms, 
though  how  long  they  had  been  there  I 
don't  know.  Our  water-hyacinth  fell  into 
a  rusty  aspect;  but  it  doubled  its  blooms 
after  I  had  taken  it  out  of  the  jardiniere 
that  served  as  a  tank  for  it  and  culled  away 
full  half  its  substance  in  dead  leaves,  blad- 
ders, and  a  few  of  the  long,  feather-like 
roots.  It  was  in  this  process  that  I  dis- 


120  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

covered  an  earth-worm  quite  alive  in 
the  mud  at  the  bottom.  Had  he  been 
there  during  the  weeks  of  the  plant's 
growth,  or  had  he  just  fallen  in  ?  Had  he 
climbed  the  rockery,  among  the  cacti,  to 
reach  the  water;  was  he  trying  to  drink, 
or  had  Reginald  McGonigle  tossed  him  in 
during  an  unbidden  visit  ?  One  of  these 
worms,  dropped  from  a  flower-pot,  was 
found  on  the  leaf  of  a  pitcher-plant.  His 
surprise  and  bewilderment  were  betokened 
by  questioning  ventures  this  way  and  that. 

And  as  we  have  rotations  in  crops  and 
weeds,  so  I  find  rotations  of  insects  and 
things.  This  year  the  wire-worm  is  about 
in  myriads,  the  wood-louse  or  sow-bug 
outdoes  his  brethren  of  last  year  five  to 
one,  the  hard-shelled,  swift- footed  centi- 
ped  is  turned  up  so  deep  in  the  earth  that 
I  think  he  must  use  the  holes  of  the  angle- 
worms to  get  there,  and  the  thrip  is  more 
plentiful  on  the  roses.  Next  year  it  will 
be  tarantulas  and  megatheriums,  maybe. 
Reginald  McGonigle  is  the  only  constancy. 

We  begin  to  prize  the  autumn  greenery, 
and  occasionally  to  put  boxes  or  papers 


AUTUMN  121 

over  plants  when  a  frosty  night  is  threat- 
ening. The  papers  are  generally  blown 
about  the  premises  before  morning,  and 
probably  in  their  flight  they  break  as  much 
as  they  should  have  saved.  Our  calceo- 
laria, having  been  pinched  down,  is  bloom- 
ing anew ;  our  buttercup  is  still  at  it ;  the 
roses  have  a  few  belated  buds;  while  the 
cosmos,  with  its  honest,  wholesome,  daisy- 
like  flowers  and  its  feathery  foliage,  is  just 
enjoying  itself.  One  of  our  cosmos  plants 
freaked  in  November  in  a  singular  fashion: 
one  of  its  flower-stalks  had  thickened  lat- 
erally until  it  was  perhaps  three  quarters 
of  an  inch  wide, — obviously  the  union  of 
several  stems, —  and  at  its  crest  it  bore 
a  long  comb  of  stamens  and  pistils,  with  a 
fringe  of  petals.  This  comb,  or  oval  flower, 
must  have  consisted  of  at  least  five  united 
flowers,  and  was  three  inches  long.  A 
potted  dandelion  sulks.  I  stripped  the 
seeds  from  a  head  in  the  summer,  and 
pressed  them  under  the  mold  in  the  pot. 
They  all  came  up  together,  a  score  of  tiny 
green  shoots ;  but  perhaps  because  they 
crowded  each  other  they  stopped  at  an 


122  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

inch.  We  have  few  thistles,  for  the  lawn- 
mower  gives  little  chance  to  them,  and  the 
Russian  thistle  has  been  frightened  away 
to  the  west  because  of  the  laws  against 
it.  I  wonder  why  they  don't  pass  a  law 
against  jimson-weed,  aphides,  and  Regi- 
nald McGonigle.  I  'm  sure  they  need  it. 
But  most  likely  it  would  never  be  enforced. 
Some  barrister  would  lend  himself  to  an 
opposition,  and  would  cite  acts  of  King 
Stephen  or  the  Virginia  colonizers  to  prove 
that  these  offenses  had  received  a  special 
sanctity.  If  chosen  to  the  legislature,  he 
might  change  his  heart  and  his  mind.  Such 
things  have  been  heard  of,  you  know,  as 
paying  a  lawyer  a  state  salary  to  frame  or 
pass  laws  in  the  legislature,  and  discover- 
ing him  in  court  afterward  in  heated  argu- 
ment against  the  validity  of  his  own  laws. 
Late  fall  and  early  spring  are  good  sea- 
sons for  the  study  of  geology  and  mineral- 
ogy, as  the  vegetation  is  light,  and  the 
character  of  the  ground  may  be  seen. 
And  our  yard,  in  common  with  the  other 
yards  of  this  town  and  some  thousands 
of  miles  of  unyarded  country,  has  had  an 


AUTUMN  123 

interesting  history.  Had  I  stood  18,000 
years  ago  where  I  stand  to-day  when  I 
weed  the  hydrangeas  and  stir  the  earth 
about  the  "pinys,"  I  should  have  been 
facing  a  wall  of  ice,  the  receding  glacier 
of  the  last  Ice  Age.  And  I  and  certain 
millions  of  others  live  on  the  debris  of  that 
glacier.  This  enormous  mass,  over  a  mile 
thick,  moving  sluggishly  but  irresistibly 
southward  to  its  melting-point,  brought 
with  it  millions  of  tons  of  sand,  soil,  gravel, 
and  boulders,  and  dumped  them  into  the 
Atlantic,  building  up  from  the  bottom  of 
that  sea  an  island  120  miles  long,  and  leav- 
ing parts  of  its  moraine  at  other  points 
between  here  and  the  Rockies.  A  conjunc- 
tion of  exterior  planets  had  pulled  at  the 
earth  by  gravitative  force,  elongating  its 
orbit,  so  that  for  some  years  the  winters 
on  the  side  slanted  from  the  sun  were 
lengthened  and  the  summers  shortened. 
The  southern  half  of  the  globe  will  be 
frozen  up  in  about  75,000  years,  when  the 
conjunction  is  repeated. 

And   in   the   light  of  such   portentous 
events  the  back  yard  becomes  important. 


124  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

I  know  the  locale  of  certain  fragments  that 
I  find  there  —  speaking  now  of  minerals 
and  rocks,  instead  of  the  commoner  rags, 
boots,  bottles,  and  other  materials  of  "  made 
land."  The  green  mica  I  know  comes  from 
Fort  George,  New  York ;  the  green  feldspar 
from  a  mile  or  two  south  of  that  point ;  the 
basalt  from  the  palisades  of  the  Hudson ;  the 
jasper  from  a  now  extinct  reef  of  it  which 
may  be  traced  beneath  that  river ;  the  ser- 
pentine from  Hoboken ;  but  mixed  with 
these  are  specimens  from  the  Hudson 
Highlands,  the  Adirondacks,  the  Connecti- 
cut hills,  the  Green  Mountains,  perhaps 
from  those  oldest  hills  of  all,  the  Lauren- 
tians  —  a  noble  range,  no  doubt,  that  the 
glacier  wore  down  to  mere  roots  and  stumps 
of  its  old  self.  When  we  record  or  guess 
upon  these  things,  man  and  his  work  ap- 
pear too  trivial  to  think  about,  and  time, 
space,  mass,  force,  too  great  for  his  under- 
standing. There  is  too,  in  the  passing  of 
the  autumn,  some  hint  of  the  cold  death 
that  must  overtake  the  race  of  humankind, 
the  world  it  lives  in,  and  the  solar  system 
in  which  it  moves.  It  is  too  vast  and 


AUTUMN  125 

lonely  a  theme  for  the  imagination.  By 
potting  the  plants  for  winter  blooming, 
tearing  up  the  faded  annuals,  setting  bulbs 
that  are  to  flower  in  spring,  and  mulching 
the  beds  against  the  coming  of  cold  weather, 
one  can  forget  these  grandeurs,  and  his 
mind  is  comforted. 


VIII 
FLOWERS   AND    INSECTS 

DID  it  ever  come  into  your  head  that 
you  were  going  to  like  something  from 
merely  hearing  its  name  ?  When  I  was 
convalescing  from  an  illness  in  my  youth 
it  occurred  to  me  that  I  wanted  a  charlotte 
russe.  I  had  never  seen  or  tasted  one  of 
those  confections ;  1  hardly  knew  it  from  an 
oyster;  but  I  longed  for  it — because  I  did. 
Invalids  have  that  privilege.  My  parents 
went  to  a  baker  and  had  one  made.  It 
was  one  quart  in  content,  and  I  ate  it 
greedily  to  the  last  crumb,  and  have  never 
cared  much  for  charlotte  russe  since. 
Sometimes  this  gustatory  exploit  recurs 
to  me  when  I  find  myself  desiring  with  an 
equal  ardor  of  sympathy  or  curiosity  to 
own  some  object  of  natural  interest  or 

beauty.     There  was  a  crystal  of  epidote, 

126 


FLOWERS  AND   INSECTS  127 

for  instance,  that  had  to  be  got  for  my 
little  group  of  minerals.  Why  epidote 
more  than  rhodonite  or  dioptase,  I  do  not 
know,  unless  it  be  that  the  name  happened 
to  be  remembered  from  seeing  a  labeled 
specimen  in  childhood. 

And  so  it  was  with  the  trillium.  I  had 
never  seen  one,  yet  I  cared  a  good  deal 
more  for  it  than  for  a  lilium.  As  I  was 
more  than  forty  years  old  before  I  saw 
one,  there  should  have  been  a  lack  of  en- 
thusiasm in  getting  it ;  but  the  exuberance 
of  youth  came  over  me  at  the  moment, 
and  I  never  coddled  anything  into  health 
with  more  care  than  I  did  that  waxen  flower 
and  its  broad,  frank  setting,  after  I  had 
lodged  it  in  a  shady  corner  of  my  city 
yard.  Was  it  the  name  that  made  me  like 
it  ?  Trillium  !  There  is  music  in  it ;  there 
is  a  sense  of  wildness ;  it  ripples  on  the 
tongue ;  it  has  cadence,  and  somehow  it 
suggests  the  woods.  As  in  all  spring 
flowers,  there  is  refinement  in  it,  a  delicacy 
and  modesty ;  but,  unlike  most  of  the  blos- 
soms of  its  season,  it  has  dignity  and  sub- 
stance. Its  petals  are  large  for  the  time. 


128  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

If  it  belongs  to  the  rank  of  floral  infants, 
it  is  at  least  one  of  those  big,  healthy,  com- 
posed infants  that  are  born  at  an  advanced 
age  and  are  advising  their  elders  at  five. 
What  is  of  moment,  it  blooms  and  flour- 
ishes in  the  wild  corner  of  our  yard. 

Rather  opposed  to  the  trillium,  with  its 
choiceness  and  aristocracy,  is  the  mustard. 
This  cheap  and  frequent  plebeian  riots  in 
the  mean  places  of  the  town — the  empty 
lots,  the  littered  street  sides.  Just  as  the 
summer  had  opened  I  found  a  black  mus- 
tard (why  black  ?  for  the  Brassica  nigra 
has  n't  a  bit  of  black  about  it)  that  had 
sported,  as  the  florists  say,  producing  white 
instead  of  yellow  blossoms.  Undeterred 
by  recent  failures  with  wild  clover,  some 
ferns,  and  some  violets,  I  transplanted  the 
weed  to  the  yard.  Sharp  differences  of  soil 
no  doubt  kill  these  things,  where  breaking 
of  the  roots  may  not,  and  when  the  mustard 
collapsed  I  supposed  it  was  done  for ;  but 
in  a  week  or  two  it  put  out  buds,  though  it 
did  not  straighten  from  its  wilted  attitude 
for  a  month,  and  after  a  little  it  flowered 
copiously.  It  is  surprising  what  a  number 


FLOWERS  AND   INSECTS  129 

of  things  get  in  your  way  when  you  look 
for  them.  Since  finding  the  white  sports 
on  mustard  I  have  looked  for  others  and 
discovered  them  by  dozens.  This  sporting 
is  not  uncommon,  though  there  is  always  a 
tendency  to  revert  to  the  original  type  after 
gardeners  have  succeeded  in  turning  the 
freak  into  a  seeming  permanence.  Our 
chrysanthemums  were  never  truly  fine  but 
once,  and  that  was  when  they  came  from 
the  conservatory.  Since  then  they  have 
been  made  small  and  unreliable. 

A  red  petunia  paled  on  my  hands,  and 
on  some  of  the  other  petunias  there  were 
freaks  of  doubling.  One  whole  plant  of 
this  species  threatened  for  a  time  to  sport 
into  the  double  variety,  for  its  stamens 
thickened  into  petals,  white  and  plainly 
visible  in  the  purple  throat  of  nearly  every 
flower.  The  dianthus  was  unaccountable. 
It  sent  up  an  extraordinary  variety  of 
bloom  —  single,  double,  red,  pink,  white, 
nearly  black,  in  all  patterns  and  shades. 
Our  nasturtiums,  too,  raised  from  the 
seed  of  last  summer's  plants,  show  new 
colors  since  last  year.  Our  early  chrysan- 


130  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

themums  —  feverfew,  or  "  featherfew  "  as  a 
florist  calls  them  —  are  full  of  sports,  singles 
and  doubles,  yellows  and  whites,  growing 
on  the  same  bush. 

If  we  are  surprised  by  atavism  in  the 
human  species,  there  is  at  least  as  much 
reason  to  be  puzzled  by  the  pranks  of 
heredity  in  plants.  Here  is  a  pansy  be- 
low our  window  that  bears  blossoms  of 
a  royal  purple  throated  with  gold.  Ex- 
plain, if  you  can,  why  it  yields  one 
morning  a  blossom  of  white  edged  with 
sky-blue.  Has  some  ancestral  cross  in 
fertilization,  or  some  parent  type,  asserted 
itself  again  ?  The  azalea  often  —  indeed, 
usually  —  sports  into  foreign  colors,  the 
red  issuing  a  dozen  white  blossoms,  and 
vice  versa.  A  double  petunia  that  I  got, 
with  a  noble,  rose-like  flower  of  crimson 
velvet,  turned  its  blooms  into  magenta 
banded  with  white  after  getting  into  our 
ground,  and  finally  settled  into  that  form. 
One  of  our  irises,  which  we  soak  at  the 
roots  in  spring  to  make  them  remember 
their  marshy  habitat,  petaling  in  mauve 
and  white,  carried  a  stalk  of  deep  purple 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  131 

blossoms.      Again,    how    is   it   accounted 
for? 

Equally  curious  with  the  sports  are  the 
exhibitions  of  plant  intelligence.  Climb- 
ing vines  generally  exercise  a  good  caution 
as  to  the  way  they  will  support  themselves. 
They  act  almost  as  shrewdly  as  animals. 
But  now  and  then  they  are  fooled.  A 
sweet-pea  in  our  yard  caught  a  loose  end 
of  string  that  was  fluttering  from  the  fence ; 
but  finding,  after  one  of  its  tendrils  had 
taken  about  five  turns  at  the  very  end 
that  it  had  no  stability,  it  lengthened 
and  strengthened  the  tendril  into  a  kind 
of  stem  that  held  this  string  at  arm's 
length,  so  it  might  delude  no  other  branch. 
And  the  satisfaction  that  a  plant  seems  to 
feel  when  it  gets  where  it  wants  to  be  must 
extend  itself  to  the  beholder.  A  lantana 
that  I  bought  of  a  huckster  as  a  common- 
place bit  of  greenery  spread  into  a  bush 
five  feet  wide  and  full  of  bloom  in  a 
piece  of  dry,  poor,  sun-heated  soil.  And 
I  can't  help  thinking  that  men  would  be  a 
good  deal  like  our  lantana,  only  they  hate 
to  leave  their  greenhouse, — the  city, — and 


132  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

stand  the  sun  and  wind,  even  with  a  prom- 
ise of  flowering  into  genius.  The  mass  of 
us  dread  change.  We  don't  want  our 
roots  disturbed.  Even  with  our  commu- 
nistic tendency,  we  are  so  fond  of  ourselves, 
even  the  worst  of  us,  that  we  would  think 
twice  about  swapping  places  with  other 
people.  As  to  exchanging  personalities 
—  never !  We  might  want  their  advan- 
tages, but  would  prefer  to  have  them  with- 
out the  penalty  of  assuming  their  bodies 
and  minds.  But  what  a  confession  of  help- 
lessness this  communism  is  !  One  Thoreau 
is  worth  twenty  of  us,  for  he  dared  to 
live  his  own  life.  Specializing  of  indus- 
tries has  made  us  dependent  on  each  other, 
and  society  is  become  an  exchange.  But 
why  should  I  give  fifty  per  cent,  of  my 
effort  for  fifty  per  cent,  of  some  other 
man's?  Why  not  keep  my  hundred  per 
cent.,  especially  as  I  keep  my  personality 
with  it  ? 

Let  's  see:  where  was  I?  Oh,  yes;  my 
lantana.  Ill-smelling,  rather,  and  thorny, 
but  showy,  clean,  and  reliable.  With  the 
waning  of  the  season  it  began  to  be  im- 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  133 

portant,  and  arose  to  a  certain  arboreal 
dignity.  Its  clusters  of  yellow  and  orange 
blossoms  always  drew  the  eye  from  the 
window  —  the  back  one,  of  course ;  for 
there  's  a  big  difference  between  the  front 
and  the  back  view,  even  when  the  yard  is  in 
its  winter  burial  of  manure  and  snow.  The 
front  view  bespeaks  artifice,  restraint,  and 
the  maker  of  them — man.  The  back  view 
is  just  a  peep  at  the  page  of  nature.  We 
cannot  cut  the  leaves,  or  get  the  covers  wide 
apart  in  the  yard,  but  we  can  read  a  com- 
forting sentence  or  two.  We  can't  raise 
anything  in  our  strip  of  front  yard :  Mrs. 
Mulcahey's  goats  from  the  next  street 
don't  allow  it. 

Every  year's  experience  with  plants  con- 
firms one  in  respect  for  their  courage,  reso- 
lution, and  vitality.  They  ask  only  half  a 
show,  unless  they  are  pampered  children 
of  the  tropics.  I  put  out  our  sick  arau- 
caria  to  die,  for  it  had  been  hurt  by  the 
carelessness  of  a  servant  and  was  dropping 
its  branches.  I  was  assured  that  there  was 
no  help  for  it.  Pulling  it  out  of  its  pot,  I 
thrust  it  negligently  into  the  nearly  worth- 

9* 


134  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

less  soil  at  the  back  of  the  yard.  It  began 
to  brace  up.  Then  I  put  it  into  better 
earth,  where  it  was  shaded  in  the  afternoon, 
and  it  grew  and  became  a  respectable  tree, 
barring  its  lost  branches. 

The  golden-rod,  too,  is  a  determined 
plant.  When  a  stalk  of  it  finds  that  it  can- 
not reach  straight  up  to  the  sunshine,  it 
lies  down  and  works  along  sidewise  until 
it  is  clear  of  obstruction,  when  it  turns  an 
angle  and  stands  up.  It  does  other  queer 
things.  I  took  off  half  of  a  tall  stem ;  this 
amputation  affected  the  half  that  was  left 
only  in  that  it  doubled  its  foliage,  putting 
out  fresh  leaves  in  the  axils  of  the  old. 
Many  plants  make  up  for  docking  or  in- 
terference by  a  continuous  or  extra  output 
of  leaves  or  flowers.  Our  hollyhock  was 
kept  in  bloom  unusually  long  by  picking 
off  the  flowers  as  they  went  to  seed.  The 
spike  that  bore  the  blossoms  kept  growing 
longer  as  the  lower  flowers  were  cut  away, 
until  it  was  perhaps  seven  and  a  half  feet 
high,  and  it  kept  blooming  until  frost.  A 
dahlia  stripped  to  the  stalks  by  caterpil- 
lars recouped  after  a  little,  and  at  the  end 
of  the  season  had  a  finer,  glossier  coat  of 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  135 

green  than  our  neighbors'  dahlias.  A 
horse-chestnut  in  our  town  whose  leaves 
had  been  destroyed  by  the  tussock-moth 
began  life  over  in  October,  and  put  out  not 
only  fresh  leaves,  but  blossoms. 

Picking  off  a  double  white  petunia  that 
had  faded,  I  was  surprised  to  see,  through 
a  rent  in  its  petals,  what  seemed  like  a 
flower.  Pulling  off  the  corolla,  this  seeming 
was  found  to  be  true.  A  folded  blossom, 
as  large  as  two  peas,  lay  within  the  petals 
and  stamens  ;  and  one  of  the  petals  of  this 
infolded  flower  was  the  pistil  of  the  outer 
one.  Nor  was  this  instance  unique,  for  I 
found  a  flower  within  a  flower  on  the  same 
plant  afterward.  Equally  odd  was  a  per- 
formance of  the  bellis  as  it  was  going  out 
of  bloom  in  late  July.  One  of  its  blos- 
soms put  forth  two  minor  ones,  not  from 
the  stalk,  but  from  the  disk,  or  base  of  the 
disk,  itself.  A  sepal,  in  that  case,  became 
a  stalk.  Another  sepal  had  enlarged  and 
had  developed  imperfect  leaves.  One  of 
the  calendulas  repeated  this  trick  of  the 
bellis,  no  less  than  three  flower-buds  grow- 
ing from  the  edge  of  one  of  its  flowers. 

Plants  may  have  wens  and  warts,  too, 


136  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

besides  those  galls  and  swellings  made  by 
stings  of  insects.  Our  smallest  flowered 
petunia  put  out  a  runner  near  ground  ;  and 
as  it  had  been  planted  near  the  stone  walk, 
the  runner  rambled  out  upon  the  flagg- 
ing. Where  the  weight  of  it  came  upon  the 
stone,  a  callous  tumor,  or  corn,  was  formed, 
as  large  as  the  end  joint  of  a  man's  thumb, 
and  studded  with  dwarfed  or  aborted  leaves 
so  thick  that  they  were  like  moss.  Work- 
ing among  the  sweet  alyssum  once,  I  turned 
back  a  mass  of  long  stalks,  which  flower 
incessantly  until  the  cold,  to  let  in  the  light 
on  a  patch  of  seeded  earth ;  and  after  thus 
turning  it  several  of  the  stems  were  found 
to  be  thickened  and  enlarged  where  they 
had  rested  on  the  ground. 

A  white  weed  which  we  call  the  daisy, 
the  bellis  being  the  English  daisy,  has  like- 
wise demeaned  itself  queerly.  It  is  a  plant 
rescued  from  a  dusty,  vacant  lot  and  made 
to  increase  and  improve.  Turning  back  a 
mat  of  its  new  growth,  a  sturdy  shoot  was 
disclosed  beneath  it ;  and  this  shoot,  almost 
a  branch,  terminated  in  a  star  of  over  thirty 
young  leaves,  most  of  them  on  stalks  a 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  137 

couple  of  inches  long.  In  the  heart  of  this 
rosette  was  a  stemless  flower-bud. 

Where  do  all  these  things  come  from 
that  pop  out  of  the  earth  while  your  back 
is  turned,  and  that,  too,  after  you  have 
browsed  through  the  yard  for  weeks,  pull- 
ing up  with  trowel  and  fingers  every  sus- 
picious thing?  In  one  of  the  beds  thus 
attended  I  found  a  self-heal,  or  prunella; 
and,  being  there,  I  let  it  flower,  and  eke 
encouraged  it.  Though  a  country-loving 
plant,  it  thrives  in  town  on  neglected  streets 
and  among  the  cast-off  bed-springs  and 
dry-goods  of  vacant  lots.  It  is  a  frugal 
flower,  for  it  does  not  lavish  its  blossoms 
in  a  day,  but  puts  out  alternate  flowers 
in  alternate  rows.  The  blooms  are  like 
dragon-heads,  but  of  a  more  intense  purple 
before  opening  than  afterward. 

Dead  leaves  have  many  pranks.  You 
find  them  caught  and  impaled  on  trees 
they  never  grew  upon;  and  finding  them 
thus  misplaced,  and  carelessly  assuming 
that  they  belong  and  were  green  there,  you 
make  a  note  of  the  apple-tree  with  chestnut 
leaves  and  the  elm  that  grows  like  an  oak. 


138  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

One  amazing  patch  of  ground,  not  far  from 
our  house,  is  grown  over  with  cat-brier; 
and  after  a  gale  all  the  waste  paper  in  the 
county  seems  to  have  blown  there  and 
caught  in  the  thorns  of  it,  so  that  from  a 
distance  the  waving  and  fluttering  are  as  of 
an  army  with  banners.  On  a  windy  day 
in  early  spring  I  found  a  dead  leaf  spinning 
like  a  windmill.  Ordinarily  a  leaf  will  turn 
a  few  times,  then  turn  back ;  but  this  whirli- 
gig kept  on  endlessly  in  the  same  direc- 
tion. I  looked  at  it  closely.  It  was  an 
elm  leaf  blown  from  a  distant  tree  and 
caught  by  the  stem  in  a  cat-brier  tendril. 
It  had  freedom  of  rotation,  but  a  swell 
in  the  stem  prevented  it  from  falling  out, 
while  a  curve  in  the  leaf  gave  the  wind  a 
purchase  on  it. 

But  these  antics  and  occasionals  are  of 
moment  only  as  they  enforce  notice  to  the 
steadiness,  order,  and  beauty  that  are  every- 
where—  qualities  that  escape  us  because 
we  take  them  for  granted.  For  the  best 
is  the  cheapest,  and  the  very  best  costs 
nothing.  Air,  water,  room  to  move,  friend- 
ship, love,  these  have  no  money  value. 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  139 

The  beauty  of  nature,  that  is  constantly 
offered  and  frequently  spurned,  is  always 
there  for  the  looking  and  smelling  and 
hearing.  But  we  prize  best  what  is  bought 
with  some  cost  of  human  muscle,  blood, 
sin,  virtue,  or  cash — especially  cash.  If 
dandelions  were  made  in  Birmingham  at 
£i  los.  6d.  a  gross,  many  ships  would 
be  laden  with  them  every  spring.  If  they 
were  tin  ones  made  to  look  like  real,  they 
would  have  a  good  sale,  anyway.  In  fu- 
nerals it  will  be  noticed  that  the  importance 
of  the  man  in  the  coffin  is  usually  in  in- 
verse ratio  to  the  number  of  the  carriages 
that  follow  him.  In  life  it  is  noise  and 
difficulty  that  advertise  some  men.  Flow- 
ers would  be  more  admired  if  they  barked. 
It  is  not  the  exception  that  is  wonderful: 
it  is  the  steadfast.  Yet  perpetuation  and 
duplication,  which  to  us  are  order,  are  per- 
haps a  proof  that  nature  proceeds  along 
the  lines  of  least  resistance.  It  is  easier 
to  imitate  than  to  invent.  The  flowers, 
the  crystals,  the  planets,  the  water-drops, 
are  orderly  in  form  and  conduct.  Look 
at  a  mullein  leaf.  Its  velvet  is  a  crowd  of 


140  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

stars.  In  very  soft  leaves  these  stars  have 
branches.  The  insect  wandering  among 
them  should  know  a  delight  as  wild  as  that 
of  a  man  in  a  jungle. 

Oh,  yes,  we  agree  that  the  insect  goes 
to  the  flower  to  feed;  but  why  is  the  flower 
made  beautiful  for  him  as  well  as  savory  ? 
Has  the  insect  an  esthetic  sense  ?  If  so, 
it  means  more  than  ours,  for  color  to  him 
is  life.  The  guide-lines  in  the  flowers  are 
ways  to  the  honey.  And  look  through  a 
magnifier  and  see  into  what  palaces  the 
fly  is  bidden.  With  your  eye  at  the  lens, 
you  are  a  fly  yourself.  Take  the  tiny 
nettle.  What  a  hall  of  pearl  and  ame- 
thyst !  What  purple  frescos,  what  rich, 
dewy,  nectarous  translucency  !  We  could 
not  in  a  home  of  porcelain  environ  our- 
selves like  that ;  but  perhaps  we  shall  try. 
A  dining-hall  of  rose  and  yellow,  for  ex- 
ample, with  no  windows,  but  walls  and  roof 
soft  shining,  full  of  fragrance.  Will  man 
ever  be  kind  and  fine  enough  to  fit  such  a 
place  ?  Can  he  ever  live  as  gaily  as  the 
bee  ? 

That  reminds  me  that  I  had  the  family 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  141 

out  the  other  day — a  raw  morning  in  early 
June  —  to  look  at  the  grandfather  of  all 
bumblebees,  who  had  alighted  in  a  blossom 
of  the  pale  yellow  iris.  He  was  not  fertil- 
izing it,  because  he  was  under  the  petal 
that  bears  that  delicate  brush  of  stamens, 
so  we  thought  he  was  probably  boring  for 
nectar  through  the  petal,  or  sucking  it 
through  some  tiny  aperture  we  could  not 
see,  as  his  abdomen  was  working  strongly. 
On  lifting  the  petal  and  even  touching  him 
with  a  pencil,  he  showed  no  sense  of  dis- 
turbance. His  wings  were  closely  folded, 
and  the  flower  was  heavy,  cold,  and  wet, 
as  everything  was  in  that  chill  morning. 
Perhaps  he  was  a  little  benumbed.  At 
last  a  prod  with  the  pencil  angered  him, 
and  swinging  down  from  the  flower,  he 
bumbled  off  through  the  yard,  finally 
alighting  on  a  peony. 

Occasionally  bees  wrangle  over  the  right 
to  a  flower,  and  two  such  I  found  in  a 
regular  wrestle.  They  were  not  so  de- 
termined but  that  they  could  fly  a  little, 
yet  with  obvious  lack  of  mutuality  in  pur- 
pose, falling  to  the  ground,  rolling  over 


142  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

and  over,  and  clawing  the  grass  with  their 
hind  legs  to  secure  a  hold.  They  were 
locked  in  such  a  hug,  face  to  face,  that 
they  endured  some  ducking  with  the  hose 
before  they  broke  away,  and  were  so  ex- 
hausted they  could  hardly  fly. 

Could  it  have  been  a  worker  that  had 
followed  a  drone  into  our  premises  to  ex- 
terminate him  at  the  time  of  the  annual 
massacre  ? 

Doubtless  we  are  illogical  to  take  such 
displeasure  at  humble  creatures  in  their 
larval  state,  while  we  joy  so  greatly  in  their 
completed  form ;  but  so  long  as  flowers 
and  foliage  are  fairer  than  grubs,  it  will  be 
so.  Though  I  wage  war  on  caterpillars 
that  I  find  consuming  our  floral  pets,  I 
confess  that  now  and  then  I  remit  the 
penalty  in  the  case  of  some  big  and  well- 
marked  fellow,  for  the  promise  he  has  in 
him  of  being  a  handsome  butterfly.  I  toss 
him  over  the  fence,  because  our  neighbors 
don't  care  as  much  for  flowers  as  we  do. 
Odd  creatures,  some  of  these  larvae  !  The 
limacodida  that  I  found  under  maples  in 
Connecticut  and  oaks  in  Georgia  is  a  flat, 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  143 

green  object  with  moss-like  fringe  in  place 
of  feet;  it  moves  by  inflations.  I  put  it  on 
its  back,  and  by  these  same  inflations,  be- 
ginning at  the  tail  and  running  upward 
toward  the  head,  it  arched  itself  more  and 
more  until  its  balance  was  destroyed  and 
it  tipped  over,  right  side  up.  It  is  a  nota- 
ble simulator  of  a  leaf,  and  might  easily  be 
concealed  by  its  color  in  vegetation. 

Men,  also,  take  on  more  shape  and  color 
from  their  diet,  their  work,  and  their  sur- 
roundings than  we  realize.  There  is  still 
some  granite  in  the  New  England  charac- 
ter, some  heat  in  the  tropical  temperament. 
Sometimes,  though,  it  does  n't  improve 
one  to  become  an  adult.  He  is  better  in 
the  larval  stage  of  youth.  Life  mocks  us 
when  it  reverses  a  promise.  I  used  to 
know  a  juvenile  phenomenon.  At  sixteen 
he  played  on  the  piano  uncommonly  well 
— with  his  fingers.  His  music  lacked  soul. 
"  Never  you  mind,"  said  his  father,  with  a 
wise  nod ;  "  all  that  Nicodemus  needs  to 
finish  him  is  to  fall  in  love.  Then  you  '11 
hear  expression.  Then  you  '11  find  warmth. 
Then  you  '11  get  soul."  Nicodemus  fell  in 


144  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

love.  He  played  better.  Nicodemus  mar- 
ried. Nicodemus  is  finished.  He  does  not 
play  at  all. 

Evolution  sometimes  becomes  involu- 
tion in  the  human  specimen,  even  when 
nothing  is  gained  by  it.  With  the  insect 
there  is  little  change,  except  for  advantage. 
The  safety  of  certain  moths  that  look  most 
like  leaves  or  bark  has  made  a  tendency 
of  their  type  toward  this  imitation.  Mem- 
bers of  the  family  that  missed  the  likeness 
were  eaten.  Certain  butterflies  have  suc- 
ceeded in  looking  so  like  another  and  un- 
palatable species  that  the  birds  let  them 
alone. 

Peskiest  of  all  our  minor  plagues  are 
the  plant-lice,  or  aphides.  The  poppies, 
though  they  bloom  freely  and  gorgeously, 
are  marvelously  beset.  (I  want  to  men- 
tion our  servant's  regard  for  these  flowers 
—  the  few  that  she  takes  a  little  pains  not 
to  walk  over  when  she  is  hanging  up  the 
clothes.  "Why,  they  're  just  as  pretty  as 
paper  flowers,"  says  she.)  Running  a 
poppy  leaf  between  thumb  and  finger,  I 
often  slay  a  hundred  of  these  aphides. 


FLOWERS   AND   INSECTS  145 

Are  they  of  varying  species  on  different 
plants,  or  is  it  their  diet  of  differing  juices 
that  makes  them  seem  different  ?  On  the 
golden-rod  they  are  blood-red  and  are 
lively  —  for  aphides.  On  house-plants  I 
have  never  seen  them  other  than  green. 
On  one  camomile  that  stands  against  a 
fence  in  the  sun  they  are  pale  brown  or 
buff,  nearly  colorless  in  young  specimens; 
and  on  another  in  rich,  damp  earth  in  a 
shady  corner  they  are  lead-colored  or 
black.  In  the  middle  of  June  the  young 
shoots  on  these  plants  are  crusted  with 
them.  Ants  were  busy  milking  the  lice 
on  the  shaded  plant;  but  I  saw  none  of 
them  on  the  camomile  that  had  the  light 

There  are  no  closer  ties  between  our 
present  day  of  hope  and  original  sin  than 
these  aphides  and  Reginald  McGonigle. 
The  aphides  are  a  little  the  worse,  because 
they  are  silent  and  sneaking  in  their  habit, 
whereas  Reginald  commits  his  misdemean- 
ors with  yells  and  howls  and  snorts  and 
stones  and  shocking  language,  and  can 
therefore  be  traced.  Whatever  may  be 
alleged  against  Reginald  and  his  compan- 


146  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

ions,  they  do  not  steal  along  the  under 
side  of  the  poppies,  tapping  their  vital 
juices  and,  one  would  suppose,  indulging 
in  opium  drunkenness.  Hardly  any  plant 
is  secure  against  the  aphis.  His  fat  little 
body,  moving  almost  as  slow  as  a  snail 
even  after  he  has  begotten  wings, —  a  thing 
I  am  sure  Reginald  will  never  come  to, — 
sprinkles  itself  alike  over  leaves  and  stems, 
and  occasionally  the  flowers,  of  chrysanthe- 
mums, roses,  lilies,  ivy,  golden-rod,  and  oxa- 
lis.  The  hairy  defense  of  the  zinnia  does 
not  trouble  him,  and  neither  heat,  moisture, 
dryness,  nor  fetor  makes  him  lose  his  grip. 
If  he  should  let  go  of  anything,  the  cater- 
pillar and  beetle  and  grasshopper  are  just 
behind  and  have  good  appetites.  He 
breeds  with  amazing  rapidity,  multiplying 
almost  before  your  eyes.  Often  he  de- 
velops into  a  pest  overnight.  He  is  the 
cow  of  the  red  ant.  The  ant  scales  the 
stalk  where  this  dull-witted,  fat,  slow- 
bodied  creature  is  guzzling  the  sap,  and 
pats  and  strokes  its  belly.  The  aphis 
gives  up  something  of  the  sap,  and  the  ant 
regales  upon  it.  This  enables  the  aphis  to 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  147 

hold  more,  and  he  applies  himself  to  nurs- 
ing with  fresh  vigor.  Better  to  be  en- 
couraged than  the  ant,  in  such  a  case,  is 
the  lady-bug,  for  she  feeds  on  the  young 
of  aphides.  All  of  the  lady-bugs  we  find 
we  carry  to  our  yard,  where  we  could  find 
work  for  a  thousand. 

Do  you  suppose  these  "  critters  "  talk  ? 
I  am  sure  that  some  kind  of  understanding 
exists  among  them.  They  seem  a  peace- 
able lot,  and  when  I  have  watched  them 
through  a  magnifier  have  never  found  a 
riot  going  on.  Their  antennae  seem  to  be 
telling  things  to  each  other.  That  they  have 
audible  speech  I  doubt;  for  if  they  had 
they  would  use  up  more  energy  in  it. 
Speech  has  been  called  incipient  action; 
but  it  is  n't.  It  is  the  best  preventive  of 
action  that  ever  was  invented.  It  is  the 
safety-valve  through  which  force  discharges 
itself — the  force  which,  if  kept  back  in  si- 
lence, would  set  engines  throbbing,  and 
rend  away  the  crusts  of  custom.  If  an- 
archists had  the  public  squares  for  their 
meetings,  there  would  be  no  throwing  of 
bombs.  Peaceful  drinking  of  beer  would 


148  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

be  the  only  sequence.  Don't  make  silence 
compulsory.  Never  fasten  down  the  lid 
of  a  pot  filled  with  boiling  water.  You 
only  make  a  man  think  Damn  harder  when 
you  try  to  dam  his  speech  or  thought. 
Yet,  oh,  what  inanities  of  action  in  speech  ! 
I  used  to  be  visited  every  day  by  a  man 
who  wanted  to  be  told  what  the  weather 
was  likely  to  be  next  morning. 

Bats  are  said  to  live  on  insects,  and 
probably  it  is  our  wealth  in  the  latter  that 
brings  so  many  bats  flitting  about  the  house 
in  twilight.  One  of  them  got  indoors  on 
a  July  midnight  and  waked  me  with  the 
whirring  of  his  wings.  As  all  our  windows 
had  screens  in  them,  he  must  have  come 
down  the  chimney  and  entered  an  up- 
per room  through  the  fireplace.  He  flew 
about  at  such  a  pace  that  I  could  not  at 
first  tell  what  he  was,  and  might  have 
thought  him  to  be  a  swallow  if  we  had 
such  birds.  He  made  no  cry.  After  I  had 
lighted  the  gas  he  circled  around  and 
around  the  room  at  the  top  of  his  speed, 
the  eye  hardly  following  him.  No  doubt 
he  was  bewildered,  and  wanted  to  get  out. 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  149 

Without  the  least  intention  of  doing  a  hurt, 
and  meaning  only  to  stop  his  flight  so  that 
I  could  seize  and  put  him  out  of  doors,  I 
struck  at  him  with  a  cloth.  Either  he  was 
tender  or  I  struck  harder  than  I  knew,  for 
the  blow  killed  him. 

Bats  or  no  bats,  there  is  no  let  up  to  the 
life  of  the  yard.  It  is  gay  with  butterflies, 
moths,  bee-flies,  bees, — honey  and  bumble, 
— wasps,  and  what  not.  The  butterflies  are 
eager  creatures,  and  when  they  alight  on 
a  new  star  in  the  crown  of  a  zinnia  they  fas- 
ten to  it  as  if  they  had  the  thirst  of  a  week 
to  slake.  One  of  the  busiest  that  I  saw 
had  a  half-circle  missing  from  his  wings, 
the  gap  fitting  both  as  he  folded  them  to- 
gether. Evidently  the  missing  parts  had 
been  bitten  out  by  a  cat — a  fifth  of  their 
substance  gone.  But  he  did  not  seem  to 
mind  it. 

Our  jimson-weed  grows  apace  with  the 
summer,  and  is  eight  feet  high,  ten  feet 
wide,  and  filled  with  flowers.  In  the  twi- 
light its  blossoms  are  visited  by  the  night- 
moth,  who  drops  in  his  immensely  long 
proboscis — a  good  four  inches,  one  would 


ISO  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

say — and  pumps  at  their  honey  with  many 
a  pull  and  hitch  as  he  hovers  above  them 
on  seolian  wing.  He  has  eyes  only  for  his 
supper,  and  has  passed  within  half  a  foot 
of  our  hands  and  has  sucked  honey  so  close 
under  our  eyes  that  we  had  to  move  back 
to  see  him.  Could  any  one  abuse  with 
capture  a  confidence  like  that  ?  This  busy 
reveler  in  the  dark  is  so  like  a  humming- 
bird in  size,  mode  of  flight,  and  way  of  life, 
that  when  I  first  saw  him  against  the  sky 
I  was  sure  that  he  wore  feathers. 

There  are  other  visitors  to  the  same 
weed :  trig  spiders,  miniature  tigers  who 
flatten  themselves  against  the  leaves  and 
spring  out  on  flies  bigger  than  themselves; 
butterflies  of  the  day,  fair  as  blossoms;  and 
two  fat  and  loathly  green  grubs — tobacco- 
worms  they  are  called — so  like  rolled  leaves 
that  they  run  a  chance  of  being  handled 
by  looking  like  that.  One  of  these  grubs 
I  took  indoors  and  stabled  on  a  stra- 
monium leaf,  covering  him  with  a  glass 
dish,  slightly  raised,  to  admit  air.  He  was 
a  tight  sticker,  and  on  every  attempt  to 
move  him  uttered  an  angry  objection — 


FLOWERS  AND   INSECTS  151 

a  clicking  noise  like  the  gritting  of  teeth. 
Probably  it  was  his  mandibles  striking  to- 
gether. In  the  evening  he  had  a  hundred 
cocoons  fastened  to  his  sides  and  back.  The 
larvae  of  the  ichneumon  wasp  that  had 
been  preying  on  his  muscles,  having  grown 
from  eggs  deposited  by  that  parasitic  crea- 
ture beneath  the  caterpillar's  hide,  had 
eaten  their  way  to  the  surface  and  spun 
their  cases.  The  fellow  grew  thin  and  died 
in  a  couple  of  days.  His  mate  went  through 
the  same  experience — grubs,  cocoons,  and 
death. 

Hardly  less  beautiful  than  the  butterflies 
are  the  dragon- flies  with  soap-bubble  colors 
on  their  wings.  I  found  one  of  unusual 
size  with  a  broken  wing  in  the  yard.  His 
best  color  was  in  his  eyes,  which  were  like 
cabochon  sapphires,  very  large.  On  at- 
tempting to  fly,  he  would  fall  to  the  ground, 
or  cling  to  a  leaf  and  lift  his  tail  in  a  half- 
circle  as  if  trying  to  sting.  I  found  him 
dead  on  the  walk  in  the  evening. 

A  colored  man  brought  to  me  one  of 
these  handsome  dragon-flies,  or  "  devil's- 
darning-needles  "  as  they  used  to  be  called 


152  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

in  my  boyhood.  He  had  struck  it  in  fear, 
and  the  creature  was  all  but  dead.  "  Oh, 
they  Ve  got  a  terrible  stinger,"  said  he,  as 
he  cautiously  delivered  the  fly  into  my  out- 
stretched palm.  And  he  was  surprised  and 
half  incredulous  when  I  told  him  that  the 
poor  thing  was  not  only  harmless,  so  far 
as  we  are  concerned,  but  that  it  was  one 
of  our  best  friends,  as  it  preyed  on  the 
mosquito.  It  has  been  a  theory  of  mine 
that  a  few  patent  facts  ought  to  be  taught 
in  the  primary  schools.  Here  is  this  dragon- 
fly. In  my  childhood  I  was  seriously  told 
that  if  I  allowed  one  to  alight  on  me  it 
would  sew  up  my  ears.  That  scared  me 
so  that  it  did  not  at  once  occur  to  me  that 
perhaps  it  was  n't  necessary  to  sit  still  and 
be  sewed.  In  New  York  City  a  panic  oc- 
curred in  a  public  school  because  a  dragon- 
fly came  in  at  an  open  window.  Several 
children  were  hurt  in  the  rush  for  the  stairs. 
Yet  I  suppose  all  of  those  boys  and  girls 
could  have  figured  out  one  of  those  useful 
and  instructive  problems  about  what  is  the 
price  of  potatoes  in  Schoharie  County  if  they 
are  selling  in  Putnam  County  for  I  lyf  cents 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  153 

a  peck,  and  the  price  in  Schoharie  is  -^  of 
6%  per  cent,  higher  than  it  is  in  Putnam. 
The  farmers  seemed  to  me  to  be  gifted  with 
absolute  mathematical  genius  when  I  read 
about  them  in  the  arithmetics.  Perhaps 
degeneration  has  set  in  among  them  since 
my  school-days.  Perhaps  they  don't  hold 
out  now  for  a  forty-seventh  of  a  cent  on  a 
potato  trade.  Perhaps — 

There  's  that  McGonigle  boy  trying  to 
stamp  down  our  new  rose-bushes  !  I  must 
pause  for  a  moment  to  kill  him. 

No;  he  has  escaped,  and  is  at  this  mo- 
ment uttering  gibes  from  the  stronghold 
of  his  own  yard.  I  fear  that  Reginald 
was  born  with  a  desire  to  rule.  He  has 
chosen  the  wrong  time  and  the  wrong  land 
to  do  it.  Most  people  do  like  to  rule,  if  it 
comes  to  that ;  but  see  how  unfair  it  is  to 
the  other  people,  because  they  want  to  do 
the  same  thing.  There  is  one  thing  worse, 
and  that  is  to  be  ruled.  Still,  in  our  cities 
we  cannot  complain,  for  there  we  are  sel- 
dom governed :  we  are  merely  taxed.  It 
will  make  Reginald  quite  unhappy,  when 
he  grows  up,  to  realize  how  little  restraint 


i$4  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

we  need  from  outside.  Rhode  Island  had 
no  constitution  until  fifty  years  ago.  Few 
knew  it,  and  nobody  was  the  worse.  Eng- 
land cannot  prove  that  she  has  one  at  this 
day.  A  man  who  is  sure  of  $1000  a  year 
is  above  government.  He  can  afford  to 
watch  with  a  careless  eye  the  struggles  of 
Reginald's  father  to  get  city  contracts. 

I  turn  with  pleasure  from  the  contempla- 
tion of  Reginald  to  the  fire-flies.  We  en- 
joy their  mild  pyrotechnics  in  the  evening. 
It  is  another  rural  pleasure  that  may  pertain 
to  a  city  lot.  One  evening  a  visitor  spryly 
caught  one  in  his  hand — a  proceeding  that 
I  disapprove.  In  a  trice  he  had  pinched 
off  the  creature's  abdomen  and  crushed  the 
rest  of  him.  He  explained :  "  The  scien- 
tific sharps  have  told  us  that  the  light  dies 
with  the  animal.  It  does  n't,  as  you  see." 
He  caught  a  second  and  served  it  in  the 
same  way,  only  he  slashed  open  the  abdo- 
men with  a  knife.  I  put  both  of  these 
remnants  between  the  lenses  of  a  double 
magnifier  for  safe-keeping,  and  set  them 
away.  At  midnight,  four  hours  later,  the 
one  that  had  been  cut  open  with  the  knife 


FLOWERS  AND  INSECTS  155 

had  faded,  though  it  still  gave  out  a  little 
light ;  but  the  sac  which  was  whole  glowed 
as  brightly,  for  aught  I  could  see,  as  when 
the  animal  wore  it.  Had  I  been  a  true 
observer  I  would  have  sat  up  with  those 
relics  and  recorded  the  hour  when  the  glow 
disappeared.  But  I  have  a  living  to  earn 
for  my  family,  and  must  sleep.  In  the 
morning  the  remnants  were  taken  to  a 
dark  closet  for  inspection,  but  their  fires 
were  absolutely  cold. 

There  was  a  tragedy  on  a  daisy  disk. 
One  of  the  fire-flies,  or  lightning-bugs  (it 
is  not  a  fly,  and  its  shine  is  not  a  bit  like 
lightning,  so  why  not  glow-bug?),  was 
eating  or  drinking  when  a  large  yellow- 
brown  spider  pounced  upon  him,  and  so 
an  end.  The  fire- fly  was  lying  on  his  back, 
dead,  in  the  grasp  of  the  spider,  who  with 
his  hind  legs  seemed  to  retain  his  hold  on 
the  flower  while  I  shook  it,  keeping  his 
fangs  buried  in  the  abdomen  of  his  victim. 
I  lifted  the  fellow  to  the  window-sill,  and 
without  relaxing  his  hold  for  an  instant  he 
trotted  off  with  the  fly,  as  a  dog  will  some- 
times carry  an  object  of  nearly  his  own 


156  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

size,  or  as  an  ant  will  carry  one  larger  than 
himself.  The  spider  retired  into  a  crevice 
behind  the  sash  to  finish  his  meal  at  leisure. 
Other  spiders,  large,  healthy,  lithe,  black, 
marked  with  bright  yellow  on  the  back,  have 
nested  in  the  iris.  Another,  a  brown  fel- 
low, has  made  a  bag  of  his  web,  running  it 
around  several  leaves  with  its  surface  par- 
allel to  the  ground  ;  but  the  black  ones 
spin  theirs  vertically  between  pairs  of  leaves, 
with  extra-strong  webbing  in  the  center, 
where  they  stand  much  of  the  time.  On 
an  alarm  these  cobs  will  vanish;  but  if  any- 
thing drops  into  their  web  they  pounce  on 
it  like  cats.  I  put  some  small  caterpillars 
into  one  web.  Instantly  the  spider  was 
upon  them.  He  would  put  his  feet  on  the 
fuzzy  body  of  the  animal,  as  if  hesitating 
whether  to  kick  him  out  or  eat  him,  but 
really  I  suppose  he  was  preparing  to  spin ; 
then,  with  remarkable  facility,  he  would  roll 
him  around  and  around,  so  that  in  a  few 
seconds  the  caterpillar  was  incased  in  a 
shroud  of  web,  and  the  spider  resumed  his 
patient  watch  for  flies.  Evidently  this  kind 
of  meat  was  rank  for  his  taste. 


FLOWERS  AND   INSECTS  157 

But  in  each  case  the  caterpillar  worked 
his  way  out  of  the  bag  and  tumbled  down 
among  the  roots  of  the  iris ;  so  perhaps 
the  spider  merely  tied  him  up  to  save  the 
web. 

One  caterpillar  crossed  from  leaf  to  leaf 
on  a  strand  of  web,  as  deftly  as  if  he  had 
been  an  habitual  rope-walker.  My  oldest 
boy  fed  insects  to  a  spider,  and  reported  a 
capacity  on  the  latter's  part  of  fifteen  flies 
an  hour,  and  you  could  nearly  see  the  spider 
swell.  Yet  once,  when  I  gave  a  small 
white  caterpillar  to  our  biggest  spider,  she 
rolled  her  prey  in  web,  as  usual.  Then  I 
blew  upon  her.  She  may  have  suspected 
mischief  from  that  breath,  because  she 
ran  into  a  lower  corner  of  her  house ; 
whereas  the  shaking  of  iris  leaves  by  the 
wind  had  never  bothered  her.  Soon  the 
caterpillar  freed  his  head  and  began  to 
work  his  way  out.  The  spider  was  after 
him  once  more,  and  this  time  remained, 
eating  him,  as  it  seemed,  through  the  cover. 
This  cob  eats  her  own  kind,  too;  for  we 
found  the  remains  of  another  species  of 
spider  in  the  web.  There  must  have  been 


158  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

a  fight.  Sometimes  a  spider  will  eat  her 
own  husband.  That  morning,  too,  a  new- 
comer, a  child,  had  taken  up  her  residence 
in  the  same  web,  and  was  living  on  friendly 
terms  with  its  builder.  It  may  have  been 
the  cats,  or  the  Monday  wash,  or  Reginald 
McGonigle,  but  twenty-four  hours  later 
that  web  was  gone.  The  elder  cob  had 
set  up  a  new  establishment  four  or  five 
inches  nearer  to  the  fence,  and  the  young 
one  had  started  her  abattoir  in  another 
part  of  the  iris  clump.  A  month  later  our 
champion  spider  disappeared,  and  a  leaner 
one  occupied  her  place.  We  had  fed  her 
liberally  with  insects,  and  perhaps  she  had 
burst.  Before  her  heir  followed  this  ex- 
ample of  disappearance —  mayhap  from  the 
same  cause,  for  she  was  a  spoiled  child  — 
she  had  hung  a  papery  bag  —  of  eggs,  I 
presume  —  from  one  of  the  iris  stalks.  We 
found  these  bags  in  the  iris  in  the  dead  of 
winter. 

City  sounds  grow  dull;  the  perfume  of 
the  lilies,  most  luscious  of  odors,  comes  on 
a  stir  of  air.  There  is  a  chirp  of  crickets 
under  the  balsams.  A  heavy  bell  a  couple 


FLOWERS   AND  INSECTS  159 

of  miles  away  is  striking  twelve.  It  brings 
back  memories  of  bells  in  New  England, 
where  the  hour  sounds  with  a  slower  stroke 
and  an  older  tone  than  here.  An  old  moon 
rises  in  the  clear  sky,  and  the  yard  takes 
on  a  mystery  through  which  the  mind's 
eye  reads  the  way  to  fairer,  greener  spots 
that  some  long,  long  day  hence  it  may  see 
with  the  eye  of  the  body.  Or  must  it  be 
with  the  spirit  eye  alone  ? 


THE   SOUL   OF   NATURE 

THE  Greeks  had  little  to  say  about  na- 
ture, but  they  lived  closer  to  it  than 
we  do,  in  spite  of  our  habit  of  painting, 
describing,  and  gushing  over  it.  Carlyle, 
no  doubt,  would  have  said,  from  their  very 
silence  and  unconsciousness,  that  nature 
was  a  part  of  their  lives.  They  did  feel 
and  love  it.  We  need  no  other  proof  than 
this :  that  they  endowed  it  with  godhood. 
They  felt  what  science  knows  and  the  poet 
and  preacher  hope :  that  our  relation  to  the 
universe  is  wide-spreading,  though  unfath- 
omed.  What  is  behind  this  mask  of  form 
we  are  not  resolved,  yet  every  primitive 
people  realizes  that  it  is  a  sign  and  an 
emblem,  and  the  speech  of  this  realization 
is  poetry.  The  Indians  of  our  Northwest 
are  Greeks  in  their  faith ;  they  people  the 


160 


THE   SOUL  OF  NATURE  161 

woods  and  waters,  the  mountains,  the  gey- 
sers and  the  glaciers,  with  supernatural 
beings,  and  the  legendry  of  that  region  is 
full  of  the  action,  baneful  and  heroic,  that 
is  worked  by  those  forces.  Later  philos- 
ophies, in  prose  and  verse,  thrill  with  a 
hope  that  is  faith,  already,  among  these 
tribes. 

"  Manfred"  is  a  wild  dream,  is  it  not?  the 
summoning  of  spirits  from  other  worlds  — 
absurd  ?  Yet  they  tell  us  that  a  responsive 
vibration  goes  through  the  world  when- 
ever a  thing  is  done,  as  widening  circles 
spread  from  where  the  stone  falls  into 
water;  that,  as  thought  is  deed  accom- 
panied by  motion  in  the  brain,  the  working 
out  of  that  thought  affects,  be  it  never  so 
faintly,  the  gravities  and  substances  of 
farthest  suns.  Is  this  a  forecast  of  the 
energy  that  shall  one  day  blaze  from  the 
mind  of  the  race  to  lighten  those  chasms 
of  cold  that  gulf  our  world  in,  and  send 
messages  of  divine  equality  and  brother- 
hood to  the  planets  that  roll  about  Sirius 
and  Aldebaran?  It  tells,  at  all  events,  the 
oneness  of  creation,  the  refinement  of  mat- 


162  NATURE   IN   A   CITY   YARD 

ter  into  mind.  We  are  the  spirits  of  the 
universe,  emanations  in  fleshly  guise.  In 
our  best  moods  we  approach  that  larger 
soul  of  nature  and  try  to  read  it  or  impress 
it.  Some  instinct  to  create  or  command 
seems  to  work  in  us  whenever  we  meet  it 
face  to  face. 

The  growth  of  science  and  the  literary 
and  artistic  use  of  landscape  prove  a  present 
interest  in  nature  that  hardly  seems  to  have 
belonged  to  our  grandfathers,  to  whom  — 
honored  pioneers! — it  was  a  task-master 
rather  than  a  friend.  To  them  it  was  raw 
material  to  subjugate,  to  use,  but  not  to 
study  or  to  love.  Yet  man  is  but  a  piece 
of  the  world,  and  we  must  read  his  environ- 
ment to  know  his  relations  and  understand- 
ing. Our  liking  for  brevities  and  essences 
we  acquire  from  our  preference  for  men  in 
the  presence  of  nature ;  for  men  are  na- 
ture personated,  crystallized.  So  we  watch 
the  light  from  the  cabin  shining  on  the 
mountain,  rippling  across  the  lake,  or  gleam- 
ing out  at  sea,  and  we  forget  the  darkness 
and  majesty  that  it  illumines,  and  that  more 
solemn  shining  of  the  god-lights  in  the  sky. 


THE  SOUL  OF  NATURE  163 

Certain  of  us  huddle  into  cities  to  shut  out 
the  sight  of  woods  and  hills,  saying :  "A 
god  is  there.  Eternity  is  symbolized  yon- 
der. Let  us  get  together  and  deal  with 
our  affairs,  of  which  gods  and  eternity  are 
not  yet  part." 

Yet  we  are  compelled  back,  every  now 
and  again ;  for  it  is  food  and  breath  and 
physical  life  that  we  have  out  of  nature, 
even  where  there  is  no  joy  or  brightness. 
Like  wine,  it  can  exhilarate  and  debauch ; 
but,  unlike  wine,  we  cannot  live  without  it. 
Every  normal  temperament  pines  for  the 
earth  at  times,  and  art  is  only  a  form  of 
this  longing,  so  far  as  it  concerns  itself 
with  landscape.  The  painter  tells  it  on 
canvas;  we  hear  it  in  the  Waldweben  of 
Wagner  and  the  "Pastoral  Symphony"  of 
Beethoven ;  among  modern  writers  Thack- 
eray is  almost  alone  in  being  without  it  — 
he  preferred  the  streets ;  but  it  is  voiced 
in  clear  and  beautiful  tones  by  Thoreau, 
Emerson,  Wordsworth,  Blackmore,  Bur- 
roughs, Black,  of  Scotland;  White,  of  Sel- 
borne;  Miss  Thomas,  and  Miss  Murfree. 
Hawthorne  exclaims:  "  Oh,  that  I  could  run 


164  NATURE  IN   A  CITY   YARD 

wild !  that  I  could  put  myself  into  a  true 
relation  with  nature,  and  be  on  friendly 
terms  with  all  congenial  elements  !  "  How 
many  have  echoed  such  a  wish,  for  the 
mystery  of  the  world  is  on  the  hills,  and  a 
subtle  friendship  broods  in  the  wood.  At 
times  the  mystery  seems  about  to  be  re- 
vealed to  us ;  yet,  though  we  look  and  lis- 
ten, the  sphinx  lips  are  closed,  and  we  cry  : 
"  Let  us  know  this  secret." 

Still  we  must  not  peer  too  closely,  nor 
lose  the  larger  view  of  things.  Men  are 
great,  generous,  beautiful  only  in  their 
obvious  aspects ;  so  let  us  heed  our  books, 
songs,  pictures,  cathedrals,  and  other  works 
of  our  kind.  Must  we  know  the  chemistry 
of  soils  and  leaves  to  see  heaven  on  earth  ? 

We  have  come  to  that  time  when  we 
begin  to  feel  as  well  as  to  see  in  the  pres- 
ence of  woods,  hills,  oceans,  and  stars  ; 
there  are  hints  and  portents  in  them  that 
a  new  consciousness  tries  to  read.  There 
is  an  invitation  to  conquest  that  makes  us 
delight  in  peril  and  seek  it  in  the  deeps 
and  on  the  alps.  If  eased  of  our  flesh, 
we  would  ride  on  the  storm  and  bathe  in 


THE   SOUL  OF  NATURE  165 

lightning.  And  what  analogies  there  are 
between  nature  and  man's  work  and  ex- 
perience: illusion,  elusion,  suffering — qual- 
ities that  make  art.  Men  overdo  before 
they  learn  to  do;  nature  teaches  reserve, 
order,  accomplishment,  economy.  Have 
you  thought  how  nature  fits  herself  to  every 
human  mood  —  that  is,  how  the  mind  dis- 
covers answering  moods  in  nature  —  as 
well  as  sustains  us  in  every  corporal  need  ? 
All  seems  open  for  our  view  into  the  heart 
of  the  world ;  but,  as  we  look,  a  spell  is 
thrown  over  us,  and  the  green  brightens 
with  Turner's  gold  or  pales  into  Corot's 
mist  of  silver;  or  in  the  hills,  and  oftener  in 
the  desert,  on  a  few  lucky  days  of  a  life, 
rise  towers  of  gold  and  crystal  gemmed 
with  sapphire  and  topaz  and  backed  by 
peaks  of  opal.  Our  hard  and  searching 
glance  is  baffled  by  these  splendors.  The 
kindly  sun,  the  free  wind,  balm-laden,  the 
grateful  color,  the  tinkle  of  brooks,  the  lilt 
and  whistle  of  birds,  the  toss  and  sough  of 
boughs,  the  spring  of  turf,  the  beat  of  waves, 
placate,  yet  encourage  and  rejoice,  and 
create  or  fill  our  worthiest  moods.  We 


166  NATURE  IN   A  CITY  YARD 

feel  our  avatar  and  almost  see  the  hand 
that  offers  it.  Fears  of  the  ennui  of  eter- 
nity leave  us,  for  we  find  that  existence  can 
be  a  joy.  Nature  will  not  press  us  back 
to  savagery  so  long  as  we  keep  in  touch 
with  the  striving  spirit  that  animates  all 
things,  that  has  given  wings  to  the  reptile 
and  let  man  evolve  from  the  monkey. 

There  is  deep  truth  in  the  allegory 
of  Hercules's  opponent  who  regained  his 
strength  whenever  he  touched  the  earth, 
and  was  not  vanquished  until  he  had  been 
held  in  air  so  long  that  his  power  had  left 
him.  Simple  forms,  like  the  jelly-fish,  that 
keep  near  nature  and  are  elementary,  have 
powers  of  creation  and  recuperation  that 
make  us  ridiculous ;  and  the  trees,  also, 
draw  life  right  out  of  the  soil.  Why  might 
not  we  do  so,  too,  instead  of  taking  what  the 
trees  have  taken — we  parasites  of  parasites? 

The  life  that  was  potent  in  cosmic  dust 
and  chaos  flame  inheres  in  silence,  and 
those  of  subtler  sight  and  hearing  com- 
mune with  it.  We  need  to  go  back  to  the 
fields  to  renew  mental  and  spiritual  strength, 
to  cool  our  brains  after  they  have  been 


THE  SOUL  OF  NATURE  167 

heated  by  the  excitements  and  intemper- 
ances of  social  life,  to  rest  our  nerves  after 
the  jarring  of  coarse  utilities.  The  repose 
of  the  earth,  the  sky,  and  the  waters  is  val- 
uable, if  only  to  show  how  much  may  be 
told  and  done  without  fretting  and  without 
speech ;  and  little  of  our  talk  is  needed. 
In  politics  alone,  what  words !  what  fric- 
tion !  what  rivalry  !  what  hatred  !  Suns, 
and  clouds  of  suns,  wheel  through  space, 
perhaps  around  some  pivot  of  intelligence, 
and  make  no  sound ;  but  the  choice  of  a 
man  to  do  a  little  work  for  us  fills  the  land 
with  babbling  and  strife.  Is  not  this  much 
ado  about  nothing  to  speak  of  enough  to 
drive  a  man  to  the  woods,  there  to  cast 
about  for  facts  and  affections  that  are 
worthy  of  him  ?  There  he  is  among  ob- 
jects that  are  idyllic,  or  that,  at  least,  do 
not  obtrude  their  functions.  They  are 
notes  in  a  harmony,  colors  in  a  prism;  they 
exist  for  an  occult  purpose  which,  in  our 
present  development,  we  only  and  vaguely 
recognize  as  beauty.  Though  we  are  apart 
from  them,  they  follow  us,  and  their  charm 
is  tender  and  alluring  in  their  absence,  be- 


168  NATURE  IN  A  CITY  YARD 

cause  memory  is  an  artist,  and  paints  a 
better  picture  than  the  retina.  When  we 
turn  from  the  actual  scene  we  seem  to  know 
it  better,  and  to  find  a  higher  promise  and 
beauty  there.  So  does  art  soften  detail, 
suppress,  select,  and  try  to  give  us  the 
substance,  perhaps  the  soul,  of  things. 

A  spiritualizing  process  is  beginning  in 
letters,  art,  music,  color,  life.  "  The  world 
is  too  much  with  us,"  but  men  are  getting 
away  from  the  base  world  of  needs  to  the 
world  of  meanings.  They  progress  as  they 
realize  beauty,  and  the  constant  inference 
of  beauty  is  design.  Can  the  fire  of  the 
diamond,  the  tenderness  of  the  flower, 
the  loveliness  of  the  opal,  the  grandeur  of 
the  mountain,  be  accidental  ?  Are  they 
not  part  of  some  great  scheme  for  the  all- 
beautiful  and  all-good  ? 

Nature  piques,  then  eludes  us;  rejoices 
us,  and  will  not  tell  how  or  why.  We 
find  her  a  mystery,  and  we  are  ever  trying 
to  get  behind  that  mystery,  even  though 
what  is  fair  in  distance  may  be  unlovely 
and  unprofitable  at  close  hand.  It  is  not 
enough  that  we  master  inert  physical  na- 


THE  SOUL  OF  NATURE  169 

ture,  that  we  make  her  give  us  food  and 
house,  that  she  turns  mills  and  propels 
ships  for  us ;  love  and  questioning  of  her 
mean  more  than  that :  they  signify  an  effort 
spiritually  to  envelop  her ;  they  prove  an 
aspiration  in  the  soul  of  man  toward  uni- 
versality —  toward  godhood.  That  is  their 
drift.  To  what  will  it  lead  ? 


from  which  ttwasborroweo^ 


Univei 

Sou 

Li 


